Focusing on Britain in the late twentieth century, this chapter explores the responses of medical doctors working in medico-legal contexts to the emergence of the HIV test in the mid-1980s. The chapter argues that there was a 'crisis of consent' in the late 1980s, in which the culture of panic and anxiety around the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the 'wartime response' of the British government, meant that the right of patients to consent was sometimes undermined in the context of what was perceived as a national medical emergency. However, this crisis was short-lived, and consent was a consistent feature in police surgeons' thinking about HIV testing, with many medics forming liberal responses to the epidemic. The limits of such liberal responses were felt most acutely at the intersection between medicine and the criminal legal system. In the coercive environment of the prison or custody suite, medics' emphasis on consent to an HIV test was more likely to waiver, in contrast to genitourinary units where patient consent was more absolute. The chapter therefore demonstrates the tensions between care and coercion, and contributes to our understanding of the limits of consent within carceral contexts.