Lawmaker explains her HIV quarantine comment
State Rep. Betty Price says it was intended to be ‘provocative.’
A state lawmaker who has drawn criticism after asking about the legality of quarantining people with HIV has said her comments were misunderstood and intended to be “provocative” and “rhetorical” in a broader conversation about curtailing the virus.
Georgia State Rep. Betty Price, a Republican, first made the controversial statement Tuesday at a study committee meeting on barriers to adequate health care. Committee members had been discussing, she later said, why Georgia ranks second in the nation when it came to new HIV cases.
“What are we legally able to do? I don’t want to say the quarantine word, but I guess I just said it,” Price asked Pascale Wortley, the head of the Georgia Department of Public Health’s HIV Epidemiology Section, as seen in a video of the meeting.
Price, whose district includes parts of Atlanta’s northern suburbs, is a former anesthesiologist and has served on the boards of the medical associations of Atlanta and Georgia, according to her legislative biography. She is married to former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.
“Is there an ability, since I would guess that public dollars are expended heavily in prophylaxis and treatment of this condition, so we have a public interest in curtailing the spread,” she continued. “Are there any methods, legally, that we could do that would curtail the spread?”
Wortley did not directly address Price’s question about quarantining people with HIV.
She instead explained efforts by state health care officials to help people newly diagnosed with HIV to identify sex partners, to link people with HIV to care, and to locate people who are out of care.
“It seems to me it’s almost frightening the number of people who are living that are potentially carriers, well they are carriers, with the potential to spread, whereas in the past they died more readily and then at that point they are not posing a risk,” Price added.
“So we’ve got a huge population posing a risk if they are not in treatment.”
Neither Price nor Wortley responded to requests for comment Friday. On Saturday, Price clarified in a written statement to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she did not support a quarantine of HIV patients.
“I made a provocative and rhetorical comment as part of a free-flowing conversation which has been taken completely out of context,” Price wrote. “I do, however, wish to light a fire under all of us with responsibility in the public health arena — a fire that will result in resolve and commitment to ensure that all of our fellow citizens with HIV will receive, and adhere to, a treatment regimen that will enhance their quality of life and protect the health of the public.”