Punching Your Ticket

A hip hop concert in Dallas recently offered free admission, but only one one condition. People who wanted to attend the concert had to get an HIV test. It's a novel way to draw a potentially high-risk population, urban youth, into responsible behavior, but it does bring up interesting questions about coercion. A hip-hop concert probably isn't so valuable as to cause an ethical issue, but at what point would such incentives cross the line between motivational and problematic? HIV testing should be a routine part of medical care, as the CDC recommends, but I think it would be better for people to make an informed choice to get tested... not do so as part of a promotional gimmick. What do you think?

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