The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS/AIDS and the Health Care System/Children, Adolescents, & AIDS:
Flynn, Eileen P
THE COST OF CONFUSION THE MYTH OF HETEROSEXUAL AIDS Michael Fumento Basic Books, Inc., $22.95, 411 pp. AIDS AND THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM Lawrence O. Gostin, Editor Yale University Press', $35,...
...These people, however, went unnoted because the peculiar syndrome which afflicted them had not yet been identified...
...at risk for HIV infection because of the sexual and drug experimentation that is common in this age group...
...Do surgeons have a right to know whether or not patients are seropositive...
...Many of the thorniest issues are probed...
...And once approved, should the government step in to regulate the price...
...That is but a small part of the AIDS story...
...But no solution is proposed for the apathy and inaction of cities like New York in which an estimated eight thousand people who suffer from ARC and AIDS are counted among the homeless and receive virtually no medical care unless they find their way to an overcrowded emergency room...
...Fumento's main contention is that in the mid-1980s the media and politicians joined forces to propagate the notion that an AIDS outbreak in the heterosexual population was imminent...
...It is a very sobering volume, and is at its best when relating case reports of children with AIDS and their families...
...The book presents the research of the task force on pediatric AIDS...
...So far, there is neither a vaccine nor a cure, and those treatments which are available are not easy to obtain and are only partially effective...
...Given the possibility of health-care workers contracting AIDS from accidents such as needle sticks, what liabilities do hospitals face...
...He says that the underlying motivation was to lessen the backlash against gay males, to secure funding for research, and to get heterosexuals worried and involved...
...The suffering of children with a terminal prognosis and the stresses endured by their care givers are examined, as are the cultural factors which affect families coping with AIDS in locales as diverse as New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles...
...Eileen P. Flynn In 1980, and before, there were persons living with AIDS and AIDS-Related Complex (ARC) as well as asymptomatic carriers of a viral agent capable of destroying the body's immune system...
...By 1985 their dreadful illness had been named, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes AIDS identified, and a test for safeguarding the nation's blood supply devised and put in place...
...The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS by Michael Fumento is disappointing...
...These three books address several aspects of the problem...
...I believe that the deeper questions attendant to AIDS are too easily avoided in respecting the pluralism which characterizes our society as well as in the cult of individual satisfaction to which both sexes, all races and classes are drawn...
...Who should have access to experimental drugs, and when...
...But the implicit sigh-of-relief which marks The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS does little to advance the cause of designing a coherent response to AIDS and may do much to alienate people who should be working together toward this end.er toward this end...
...The unique medical needs of persons living with AIDS are detailed, and a case is made for providing for many of these needs in nonhospital settings...
...Its tone is frequently sarcastic and condescending toward gay people...
...Guidelines according to which genital intimacy is to be blessed or cursed, together with the rationale behind such limit setting, need to replace rampant confusion and permissiveness...
...Although there is much to recommend in Children, Adolescents, & AIDS, its limits are those of the psychological enterprise which strives to be nonjudgmental and value free...
...The following statement about AIDS education for adolescents is a case in point: "Adolescents...
...CHILDREN, ADOLESCENTS, & AIDS Jeffrey M. Seibert and Roberta A. Olson, Editors University of Nebraska Press, $ 19.95,244 pp...
...A discussion of how AIDS is experienced by young hemophiliacs and their families is also included...
...If safer behaviors can be learned before risky habits start, adolescents may be less likely to be infected as adults...
...I think that it is irresponsible for adults to peddle condoms and sterile needles to teenagers instead of trying to stem the tide of permissiveness which jeopardizes them...
...What are the motivational issues...
...The moral and religious claims we humans and people of God may reasonably make on one another and the specific professional responsibilities health-care givers bear toward persons infected with HIV need to be articulated...
...are...
...In the past several years pharmacology and medical science have labored to develop both a vaccine and treatments to hold in check or reverse the ravages of HIV...
...In addition, a dark side of the human condition which seeks to respond to boredom, or poverty, or emotional trauma, or physical craving by injecting drugs needs to be confronted...
...My position is that educators are morally obligated to teach their students about the safer course-abstinence from sex and drugs-and how much more promise such a life holds...
...There is a one-in-three chance that an infant will contract AIDS from an IV drug-using mother...
...Children, Adolescents, & AIDS is a collection of essays commissioned by the American Psychological Association that attempts to link medicine, public policy, law, and children's best interests...
...AIDS and the Health Care System is a collection of well-documented articles about issues of access to health care for patients infected with HIV...
...A commitment to treatment options for persons addicted to drugs ought to replace the fatalism and apathy which allow the scourge of drugs to cause the most heartbreaking AIDS-related deaths and births...
...AIDS AND THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM Lawrence O. Gostin, Editor Yale University Press', $35, $12.95 paper, 299 pp...
...Fumento succeeds in making the point that in this country heterosexuals who do not use IV drugs and who do not have sex with bisexuals have very little to worry about HIV, regardless of the number of their sexual partners...
...Are the odds sufficient to counsel abortion...
...At the same time, the absence of reverence for the sexuality of homosexual persons within patriarchal religious traditions should not be sidestepped...
...Unfortunately, they offer useful information without fully examining the kind of motivation needed for a compassionate and comprehensive response to the plight of persons with AIDS...
...Many of the sexual and drug use behaviors that will later put them at high risk will be learned in adolescence...
Vol. 117 • August 1990 • No. 14
