The availability of experimental drugs is one area where AIDS tempts government agencies to abandon existing requirements that drugs be safe and effective before they are made available to the public. When dealing with a disease that is inevitably fatal, however, an issue is whether patients should have complete access to unproven drugs. Another dilemma arises from the health care needs of AIDS patients and the associated legal and ethical obligations of health care professionals. Mandatory testing for exposure to the AIDS virus tests society's commitment to privacy; concerns of confidentiality also loom large in the case of AIDS. Disclosure statutes threaten both the physician-patient relationship and efforts to curtail the spread of AIDS. Individual and public needs must be balanced, but competing risks and benefits of certain courses of action must be ascertained before this balancing can occur. AIDS challenges existing discrimination laws and tests notions of judicial decisionmaking in the public health context. Symposium presentations specifically focus on the politics of AIDS drug trials, AIDS and health care, voluntary HIV testing, confidentiality of HIV-related information, AIDS and discrimination, and politics and rationality of public health. 6 footnotes