Possible resolutions examined briefly include nonvoluntary testing, reporting, and restricting persons believed to be infected, as well as professional and communal responsibilities toward those infected with AIDS. Communities that hold freedom to be an absolute and that see beneficence as a 'nice' but nonmoral quality, will hold the 'natural lottery' (strengthened by notions of self-causation) to be at fault for all illness and therefore, would perceive no obligation to aid patients afflicted by AIDS. Communities of this sort may resort to extreme measures when they feel sufficiently threatened by epidemics. The incompatibility of freedom as a moral absolute with the viewpoint that sees beneficence as a moral obligation is stressed. Such communities may consider testing, reporting, and restricting infected persons to be within their vision of morality. The paper concludes that most professionals look at community as constituted by more than the minimal obligations of refraining from harm to one another and include beneficence among the moral obligations.