COMMENTARY: HIV/AIDS Is America’s Problem, too

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) For the last several years, while Americans have blissfully believed it was someone else’s problem, HIV has been doing what it does best: hiding in plain sight. Taking advantage of shame, stigma and bigotry, the HIV virus has infected not only bodies but minds, luring many Americans into a […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) For the last several years, while Americans have blissfully believed it was someone else’s problem, HIV has been doing what it does best: hiding in plain sight. Taking advantage of shame, stigma and bigotry, the HIV virus has infected not only bodies but minds, luring many Americans into a state of denial.

So as we approach World AIDS Day on Friday (Dec. 1), Americans are just beginning to hear the news: HIV/AIDS is back (actually it never left). As many as 1 million Americans are infected with the virus, and nearly a quarter of them don’t even know it. Someone you know _ someone who looks like you _ may be one of them.


That reality led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend that everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 be tested for HIV during a routine physical exam. With that simple recommendation, many Americans are now aware that HIV/AIDS has not gone away but has continued the insidious pattern that has made it such an effective killer around the world.

When politicians, scientists and religious leaders gather on World AIDS Day at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in California to publicly discuss how progress can be made in the ongoing war against HIV and AIDS, some will also take the personal step of being tested. For the second year in a row, the Saddleback conference will offer free HIV testing for attendees.

I attended the conference last year and was tested, so I understand the value of the exercise. Because I was not in any high-risk group, I had never considered being tested. But I had seen people around the world remaining in denial about AIDS until it finally killed them _ and too often their loved ones, too. I was suddenly faced with my own hypocrisy: how could I recommend testing to others when I had never stepped forward myself?

So last year I took 20 minutes out of my schedule, swabbed my gum and handed the sample to a nurse, who identified me by a number, but never knew my name. A few minutes later, my number was called and I was told that my test was negative. It was simple, painless and quick.

When I have shared my experience with others, they have mostly seemed surprised. Why was I being tested? Did this middle-aged suburban mom have a secret life? It is the kind of subtle suspicion that helps reinforce the myth that “people like me” don’t have HIV. When that kind of suspicion includes our entire society, it provides effective cover for HIV to do its deadly work.

Ask anyone who is involved in the fight against this insidious virus and they will tell you that every country in the world faces the same obstacle. No one wants to think it might affect them. And so the virus subtly infects, leaving most people blissfully ignorant of its presence for as much as a decade; letting them infect others without awareness or guilt.

Unlike many people in the world, Americans do not have to die from AIDS. We are the lucky ones: we have access to health care, anti-retroviral drugs and treatment for opportunistic infections. We even have access to simple and confidential testing. All we have to do is open our eyes to the possibility that HIV/AIDS is our problem, too.


HIV/AIDS is a spiritual problem, too. Whenever we refuse to identify with those who are afflicted, we fuel prejudice. Whenever we believe “it could never happen to me” we lose our ability to minister from empathy instead of sympathy.

So as we face another year of grim statistics about HIV/AIDS, let’s do something to fight it. Let’s all step up and get tested, not just as a public health responsibility, but also as a spiritual discipline to help overcome the evil of denial that has been such an effective enabler of the disease.

KRE/JL END BOURKE

(Dale Hanson Bourke is the author of “The Skeptic’s Guide to the Global AIDS Crisis.”)

Editors: To obtain a photo of this columnist, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

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