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New York wants to take a new approach in treating AIDS in a similar way as other communicable disease. The benefit of that would be that doctors would have more resources to testing for, and monitoring the disease in infected patients. You would think that something that would provide easier access to testing and thus potentially serve more people would please AIDS activists, but guess again. They're pissed. Why? Because they want to maintain the status quo - that quo being that if you had AIDS you were "special".

Here's a quote from an AP article that caught my eye...

"To imagine that it's just like every other disease -- like cancer or diabetes -- is false," said Tracy Welsh, executive director of the HIV Law Project. "Getting a positive test result is something that turns somebody's life upside down."

Amazing. See the problem here? Having AIDS makes you MORE special than someone dying of cancer of diabetes. I'm certain that people diagnosed with either of those conditions just go along their merry way, their lives "not being turned upside down".

Twat.

The only thing "special" about someone who has AIDS is that they weren't genetically pre-disposed to get it. It wasn't a ticking time bomb in their bodies. In a vast number of cases in the US people with AIDS took the chance willingly, and lost. I suppose making stupid personal choices could make you special.

The "specialness" actually stems from that fact, that other people who have terminal diseases who had no choice in the matter might resent their peers with AIDS wanting to remain anonymous. Yes there IS a stigma that comes along with the disease, but that stigma is going away as time has progressed. The idea now that people are running screaming from an infected elementary school child who got AIDS from a blood transfusion is gone. Yes people are going to act differently around that child, but no more so than a child with some other communicable disease.

To me that's more the issue than anything else. Cancer and diabetes is not communicable - AIDS is. Having people running around not knowing they have AIDS only means that there will be more cases that could have been prevented. If you have AIDS you -do- require monitoring, and if that means more people know who you are, then that's just how it is. AIDS simply isn't special any more. The laws protect you. It's time to stop being "special", and be more like anyone else with a deadly, communicable disease. It's time to start being "responsible".