While this order is grounded on the laudatory intention of regulating social behaviour to help prevent the spread of AIDS, many of its presumptions are not just bad in law, they are bad in terms of social justice. In the process,a group that is already grossly stigmatised by society, is driven even more inexorably to the margins. By implying that AIDS-afflicted persons don't have the right to marry, the order robs them of what is a human right like any other. True, it must be made morally and legally binding on AIDS patients contemplating marriage to inform their partners about their condition. No one can quarrel with the order on this count. But ruling out marriage for such individuals is tantamount to privileging procreation above everything else within such a relationship. Modern marriage, after all, is based on the notion of companionship above everything else. If two people enter into a consensual relationship, in full knowledge that one or the other is suffering from AIDS, the state has really no call to intervene. There are numerous instances, especially in the West, of AIDS patients living full and contented lives within marriage. Besides, while the right of a prospective marriage partner to know has rightly been emphasisedin the order, the right of the patient to know that he or she is suffering from AIDS is not even referred to. Instances of people being secretly tested for the disease in this country are a legion. Such a practice goes against every accepted canon of medical ethics.

Similarly, discretion on the part of doctors about the nature of their patients' illnesses has been part of medical training and practice for decades. By turning this norm on its head, the Supreme Court order could have the effect of keeping people suffering from the disease from seeking a professional opinion on their problems. In any case, the role of a doctor in society is to cure people, not to police them. The right to privacy, of exercising control over who knows what about one, is one of the cherished values of an informed and modern society. The recent order throws this important norm to the winds. If for this reason alone, the recent Supreme Court order must be subjected to a fresh judicial interpretation. A proper regulatory system tocheck the spread of AIDS is welcome, but it must not be done at the cost of human rights otherwise the whole effort could prove self-defeating.