[AIDS, public health and ethics: the issue of barriers]

Repeatedly, the AIDS threat has caused the emergence of proposals for obligatory, authoritarian measures. It has above all been conceived to isolate given groups, so that they be "prevented to do harm". This is done, however, against the scientific and experiential evidence which shows that such measures would be either unnecessary or ineffective. It is not in the direction of discriminations of so-called risk persons or groups that appropriate "barriers" are to be sought. What is relevant is to reevaluate positive "barriers" that each and everyone should set and manage for himself/herself, especially: interest in the other person, whom it is worth first to know well (instead of thinking right away in engaging in a mechanical and impersonal sexual relationship); reserve and courtesy; choice; respect for the other's personality and health, as well as for one's own. The reintroduction of such behaviours as preferred ways of being/living would make an effective contribution to the struggle against AIDS, contrarily to the "ghettoizing" and totalitarian temptations, which would have above all counterproductive consequences.