Subject: AIDS, Stirring Panic And Prejudice, Tests The Nation's Character Date: Published: 11/13/87 320 lines Source: WALL STREET JOURNAL. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Fear and Loathing: AIDS, Stirring Panic And Prejudice, Tests The Nation's Character --- Social Critics Are Disturbed By Acts of Some Doctors, Clergymen and Teachers --- Cases of Compassion Abound --- By Clare Ansberry Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal Every day, Danny Joe Ware closes his eyes and prays that people won't be as cruel to his children as they have been to him. Just 24 years old, the father of three is dying of AIDS in Dallas, the city to which he fled recently from his home in Kilgore, Texas. He has on different occasions been pelted with rocks and jumped by three men, who shattered a beer bottle over his head, broke his nose and bruised some ribs. "What are you doing? " Mr. Ware recalls screaming during the attack, too weak to defend himself. "Killing AIDS," replied one of the men. "And when we're done with you, we're going to kill your wife and kids, just in case they've got it." Such violence, which remains a fringe reaction to sufferers of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, reflects another virulent disease, one that may threaten America's moral fabric: hatred and fear. Practically every day, the news brings word of yet another senseless response to AIDS -- from the Florida minister who bars from church three hemophiliac children carrying the virus, to the Texas man who shoots his nephew to death in the belief that he has AIDS. It isn't just the sporadic violence that troubles theologians, psychologists and others. Especially disturbing to them are the episodes of panic and prejudice involving the very people Americans look to for moral leadership -- teachers, doctors, and ministers, among others. "I know what it's like to be a leper," says Mr. Ware, who assumes he contracted AIDS in a homosexual encounter years ago. His dental hygienist has refused to clean his teeth, and, he says, nurses left his food tray at the door of his room at Henderson Memorial Hospital in Henderson, Texas. (The hospital's administrator, Ronald Clifford, says he is new in his job and can't comment on Mr. Ware's case. But food is supposed to be delivered directly to all patients, including those with infectious diseases, he says.) "Plagues and epidemics like AIDS bring out the best and worst of society," says philosopher Jonathan Moreno, who teaches biomedical ethics at George Washington University in Washington, D. C. "Face to face with disaster and death, people are stripped down to their basic human character, to good and evil. AIDS can be a litmus test of humanity." Other, earlier epidemics -- of smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis and polio -- also tested the American character. Allan Brandt, a medical historian at the Harvard University Medical School in Cambridge, Mass., recalls how terrified people were during the polio epidemic of the 1950s, when parents, fearing contagion and not knowing what to do, kept their children out of swimming pools and away from other children. Despite the dread, however, people exhibited "a great deal of sympathy for the victims," he says. Most people with AIDS, however, have been homosexual males and intravenous drug users, many of them black, Hispanic and poor. "From the beginning, the people with AIDS have been a disposable group -- gays, blacks, drug users. People don't care about them. They'd rather they wouldn't be here anyway," says Mathilde Krim, the founding chairman of the American Foundation of AIDS Research. Gay-rights groups note that physical attacks against homosexuals have risen sharply since the disease that came to be called AIDS was first publicized in 1981. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force says its studies suggest that 63% of such assaults now are related in some way to the emotions AIDS raises. In Boston, for example, three men ganged up on a man they presumed to be homosexual and shattered his jaw. "Try to spread AIDS now," one taunted him. But AIDS is by no means restricted to homosexuals. Of the more than 40,000 reported cases of AIDS in the U. S., 65% involve homosexual or bisexual men; 17%, intravenous-drug abusers. The rest are people sexually involved with infected individuals; hemophiliacs; and others who contracted the disease through contaminated blood. Federal statistics from the Centers for Disease Control report 595 cases of AIDS in children under the age of 13. As the virus strikes young mothers, babies and old people, emotions get more complicated. "The borders are no longer clear, and no one knows where AIDS will strike next," says the noted theologian Martin Marty. "In the long run, this very lack of definition breeds the beginning of tolerance and understanding. But in the short run, it breeds more panic since we don't know what to do." --- Last March, residents of Hornell, N. Y., began stopping Debra French's mother and 70-year-old grandmother on the street, saying that they had heard Miss French had AIDS. Young, healthy and rather carefree, the 29-year-old hairdresser shrugged off the baseless rumors, assuming they would fade. They didn't. Neighbors stared, and friends drew back when she talked to them. Or they would make excuses to avoid seeing her. At a local tavern, her drinks came in a plastic cup while people she was with, including her four-year-old nephew, were given glasses to drink from. Rumors proliferated after Miss French was hospitalized for an accidental drug overdose involving sleeping pills and alcohol. (She insists she was not trying to commit suicide.) The manager of the Slender You health club she belonged to asked that a doctor certify that Miss French didn't have AIDS. Days later, someone called her sister's home to offer condolences after hearing an erroneous report that Miss French had died. As it happened, Miss French herself answered the phone to hear this news of her own death. "I broke down. I was shattered," she says. Seeking vindication, Miss French had her blood tested for the presence of AIDS antibodies and distributed the negative results to local restaurants, taverns and stores. She always carries a copy of this proof in her purse. Miss French still doesn't know what precipitated the gossip, although she assumes it started because she has gay friends. "I was destroyed by rumors," she says. "Can you imagine what people with AIDS must go through? " --- Much has been written and broadcast about AIDS that explains in detail who is and isn't at risk and how the disease is transmitted. Yet, for many people, little seems to have sunk in. A public-housing official in Rochester, N. Y., tried unsuccessfully to evict a woman who was giving shelter to an AIDS victim; the official claimed that the apartment complex was endangered. When a maintenance man did some work on the tenant's toilet, he wore a World War II gas mask, tall fishing boots and rubber gloves. Thomas Dobbs, an AIDS health educator, wants to have a "Department of War" sign hung on his office door in West Virginia. "This is war against fear and ignorance," he says. He recalls the panicky highway-patrol sergeant who, after arresting a man with AIDS, suggested to Mr. Dobbs that every victim of the disease in the state be branded across the forehead. When Mr. Dobbs explained that the disease is not highly contagious, the officer yelled back: "That's a lot of bureaucratic bull." Lester Lave, an economist specializing in risk analysis at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, notes the public's distrust of what government leaders tell them. "The government told us nuclear power was nothing to worry about, and then you have Three Mile Island. The government puts its best minds at NASA, and then you have the Challenger space-shuttle disaster," he says. "And now ... researchers and health-care workers are contracting the AIDS virus. People wonder how much the government really knows." Obviously, the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, knows nothing of homosexuality or drug abuse. It is a dumb virus. And it can be passed to anyone, through blood or semen. The handful of health-care workers who appear to have become infected in the course of their work were splashed either in the mouth or in a cut with the blood of infected patients. A researcher who became infected was working with an extremely high concentration of the virus and had abrasions on his hand. In all such cases, the possibility of sexual or drug-related transmission can't be absolutely ruled out, either. When sex and drugs are involved, people don't always tell the truth. --- The woman, a social worker in New York, had tried for three years to have a baby. When she finally did become pregnant, her husband didn't want her visiting a close friend who has AIDS. Her husband, she says, doesn't trust doctors and thinks AIDS can be transmitted through casual contact. She has read enough to know that isn't true -- if it were, there would be many more cases of AIDS than there are -- yet she still feels uncomfortable. As a child, she was taught by her mother not to drink out of someone else's glass. "We were taught that's how germs and disease travel," she says. When she finally saw her AIDS-stricken friend, she went to kiss him on the cheek, and he turned away. That left her feeling unsettled, as if her friend isn't quite sure himself about the disease. Or perhaps he senses her anxiety. In any case, he won't hold her baby, and she doesn't ask him to. "I feel very bad. I feel as if I should be seeing him more, and I feel as if I'm somehow betraying him by being concerned and fearful of seeing him," she says. --- AIDS victims appear to be treated more compassionately in the U. S. and the subject is discussed more openly than is the case in certain other countries. In the Soviet Union, medical students have pledged not to seek a cure, and in such African nations as Zaire and Tunisia, where AIDS is rampant, public officials have long denied that an epidemic exists. On the other hand, in such countries as Sweden, where sex-related issues are freely discussed, there is no dearth of candid educational literature and advertising. Sociologist David Riesman believes AIDS heightens the tension in the U. S. between bigotry and a compassion cultivated in the 1960s era of civil rights and tolerance. "Mean-spiritedness isn't new," he says. "It has been there all along, repressed because we're supposed to be good, egalitarian citizens. AIDS is the opportunity to lash back." The backlash can be brutal. When the National Gay Rights Advocates asked the nation's 1,000 biggest companies whether employee medical plans covered AIDS-related expenses, one anonymous answer read: "Just enough to defray the cost of the bullet." --- The 26-year-old AIDS victim left Dallas and went home to Williamson, W. Va., to die in the familiar warm mountains where he was born, with family and friends at his side. But after word had spread that the once-popular young man had AIDS, his hometown closed its doors, according to Mr. Dobbs, the health educator, who has taken an interest in the young man. When he swam at the local pool, mothers grabbed their children and fled, leaving lotion and towels behind; the pool closed. Townspeople whispered that he was deliberately spreading disease. Consequently, he withdrew with his pet cats to his family's trailer and threatened to commit suicide. As his father and sisters kept vigil to make sure he didn't take his own life, they, too, became local pariahs. A petition was circulated to keep his younger sister and her boyfriend out of high school because residents considered them contaminated. --- Still, there are countless instances of compassion for people dying of AIDS. Daniel W. Foster, a Dallas physician, recalls a rural service-station attendant telling him to give a message to a 17-year-old patient: "Tell him God loves him." When the boy's heart stopped, a young resident and an intern spent an hour vainly trying to resuscitate him, ignoring the blood that covered their arms. "They are the real heroes," says Dr. Foster. A relatively small number of doctors won't treat AIDS patients. Some say they are afraid they will cut themselves during surgery and thereby become exposed to contaminated blood. A noted Milwaukee heart surgeon, Dudley Johnson, says he won't endanger his family. Dr. Foster recalls his own fear during the polio epidemic. "I can remember the stark terror every time I got a cold. I wondered if it was paralytic polio. We took care of those people because that's what physicians do. {Doctors} put themselves at risk. They have a moral and ethical duty." Arthur Caplan, a director of the center for biomedical ethics at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, believes that doctors and nurses who refuse AIDS patients do so out of disapproval. "They know how to deal with violent patients and infectious diseases like hepatitis." So why not treat someone with AIDS? "It's more than fear. They're making a value ... judgment about AIDS victims. They're saying they won't treat people {they find} disgusting." An alarmed C. Everett Koop, the U. S. surgeon general, says the refusal of some medical personnel to treat AIDS patients "threatens the very fabric of health care in this country." The medical profession, of course, isn't alone in its mixed response to AIDS and its victims. The ministry also is caught between concern for the unfortunate and biblical injunctions against homosexuality. The Rev. F. Forrester Church, the minister of the All Souls Unitarian Church in New York, notes that many churches rally around the battles against hunger, homelessness and poverty and back even more controversial causes such as aid to the government of Nicaragua. But he finds little support for his two-year-old AIDS task force, which pays for signs in city buses urging: "Treat a person with AIDS with kindness. It won't kill you." Politically, AIDS is considered a no-win situation, involving rising medical costs and unpopular minority groups. On Capitol Hill, the most popular AIDS-related legislation calls for mandatory AIDS screening of military recruits, prisoners and marriage-license applicants -- measures that many contend would stigmatize people without necessarily retarding the spread of disease. AIDS activists warn that without stronger presidential leadership in education and public spending, AIDS deaths will multiply at a faster rate. They contend that the scheduled deadline of next June is too late for a report by President Reagan's blue-ribbon task force, which so far has been in disarray, plagued by resignations and controversy. Says one AIDS victim sarcastically: "Half of us will be dead by then." Few states and local governments are addressing today's crisis, much less the larger one looming four years hence, when many more Americans may be infected with the AIDS virus and 179,000 will have died, according to some researchers. Dallas, for instance, experienced a 72% increase from 1985 to 1986 in the number of AIDS cases -- the most dramatic rise in the country -- but it has only one educator and nurse working full time on AIDS. There, Daryl Moore has battled bureaucracies since opening a home for AIDS victims in May. Initially, letter carriers -- federal employees -- refused to deliver the mail. When they finally did, they wore rubber gloves and were under orders to return to the post office to be disinfected. City housing officials cited the house for having eaves in need of paint, while neglected homes on the block went unnoticed. When Mr. Moore decided to sponsor an AIDS education seminar, 100 people attended, but no one would enter the house. Finally, he set up chairs on the lawn. "When people are afraid that simply walking into a house can give them AIDS, you realize how much needs to be done," he says. "We're at a great crossroads," contends Mr. Brandt, the medical historian. "We could let AIDS exacerbate bitter social divisions or we could come together to combat major social and medical crises." Theologian Mr. Marty, for one, believes Americans will grow more compassionate to those with AIDS. "Before too long, everyone will know someone who has the disease or has died of AIDS," he says. "By knowing someone who is living and breathing, someone we like and admire, our attitudes will change. I'm an optimist." AIDS victim Danny Joe Ware hopes so, too. "I want a better world for my kids," he says. [This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]