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The AIDS Ordeal
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13136 |
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EDITORIAL
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11 / 1987 |
1,832 Words |
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Morton A. Kaplan
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AIDS - acquired immunodeficiency syndrome - struck fear into the hearts of people when it first appeared a few years ago. The disease appears to be invariably fatal, although it may develop more slowly in some than in others. The prominence of some of the victims focused public attention upon the disease as surely as did its fatal characteristics.
AIDS has produced a crisis in values as well. In particular, it has created a serious conflict between the values of privacy and safety, or between a liberal and a controlled society, at least with respect to matters involving the disease.
When AIDS first appeared, it seemed to be a disease restricted to male homosexuals. This reassured mainstream society and even led some among the uncharitable to refer to it as God's punishment upon sinners. This feeling of relief was not greatly diminished by the discovery that drug users also contracted the disease through the use of dirty needles.
As with all new diseases, we know very little about it, and surely there are surprises in store. A few have already appeared. For instance, at least one dentist has contracted AIDS from a patient and several physicians became victims when blood from AIDS victims fell upon abrasions on their hands.
Concern has increased as hemophiliacs, heterosexuals, and attending medical workers have contracted the disease. Curiously, boxing referees and cornermen in New Jersey are now required to wear rubber gloves, although the fighters - who would seem to be far more vulnerable to the mixing of blood or saliva - are neither tested nor otherwise protected.
The Center for Disease Control has not behaved with great responsibility with respect to public education. Certainly it is legitimate to cite any available information in an effort to avoid uninformed hysteria that would be unnecessarily damaging to others. But I remember being outraged several years ago by a physician from the center claiming on television that it was not possible for children to acquire the disease from playmates in school.
He did not know that. The most he had any right to say was that he had no evidence that AIDS had ever been transmitted in that fashion. Although such a remark would have been less effective for the purpose he had in mind, he had no right to misinform.
More recent evidence - for instance, the cases of the doctors and the dentist - indicates that it may be possible for children to transmit the disease nonsexually. Children often bleed or scatter mucus on each other. The low probability of contagion, reputedly one in a thousand, that attends such incidents begins to rise rapidly when multiple incidents are involved. No doubt many parents might consider even one chance in a thousand too high for an avoidable fatal disease. Even should we agree that it is better to let children with AIDS attend school than to isolate them, surely parents have a right not to be misinformed by a supposed expert who let his parochial moral values, rather than his science, govern his communication.
Much of the available evidence lacks the clear-cut quality attributed to it. For instance, if the dentist who got AIDS from a patient had
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