America Living With AIDS

AMERICA Living With AI

potentially lifesaving information and
devices in order to avoid offending a
public presumed to be in agreement
with such constraints.
Astonishingly, even our most basic
efforts to better understand and
respond to this new plague have been
hampered. Efforts have been made to
constrain or forbid behavioral research; in the face of the most deadly
sexually transmitted disease ever to
confront humanity, some would prohibit even the study of the human
behaviors that put our children at risk.
Thus we disarm ourselves in the midst
of lethal battle.
Worst of all, the country has
responded with indifference. It is as if
the HIV crisis were a televised portrayal of someone else's troubles. It has
even appeared relatively painless; many
of the torments are hidden because so
many people do their suffering and
grieving in secret, out of fear of stigma,
discrimination, or rejection. But the
epidemic will not remain painless
much longer even for the most indifferent observer; soon everyone will
know someone who has died of AIDS.
If we are to honor our fundamental
social contract with our fellow citizens,
with ourselves, and with our children,
we must somehow develop a sense of
urgency. For there is only a little time
left to recognize at a deep and fundamental level that the threat of HIV is
all around us and that we must all join
in this battle for the sake of future generations. In order to have any chance
of winning, we must first energize our
nation and transform indifference into
informed action.

We have used arresting language
because Americans readily understand
the need to mobilize rapidly for collective action in response to external
threats to life. AIDS is a life-threatening disease of global proportions, and
it requires the same national resolve
and commitment to address it effectively that we exhibit in times of war.
But the military analogy does not
work well in this crisis. In war, we
tend to look for a human enemy to
attack, and alas thus far this tendency
has been all too evident in our
response to HIV. But in confronting
AIDS, our response must be just the
opposite. Compassion and concern
for human suffering must direct our
efforts. It is against the virus, not
those infected, that this war must be
waged. Tragically, to date, too many
of us have failed to understand this
fundamental distinction or acknowledge what a massive national effort is
needed to contain the epidemic.
The sapping of our collective
strength comes from many directions.
There has been a dominant undercurrent of hostility toward many people
with HIV disease, as if they are somehow to blame. But no one gets this
virus on purpose. We do not withhold compassion from people who
suffer from other diseases related to
behavior. As President Bush stated in
his single speech about AIDS, "Once
disease strikes we don't blame those
who are suffering. We don't spurn the
accident victim who didn't wear a seat
belt; we don't reject the cancer patient