The recent report on AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop contained some strange paradoxes. The report was as notable for what it didn’t say as for what it did.
Koop says: “Persons who have engaged in homosexual activities or have shot street drugs within the last 10 years should never donate blood.” (emphasis in the original) But why, in the interest of public health and safety, doesn’t Koop call for making it a felony for such persons to donate blood?
It is true that such persons may not know for sure whether or not they are AIDS-infectious, but they do know for sure whether or not they have engaged in high-risk behavior in the last 10 years. No harm is done if a high-risk person is prevented from donating non-infectious blood, but fatal harm is done if a high-risk person unknowingly donates contaminated blood.
Koop says: “Some persons with hemophilia (a blood clotting disorder that makes them subject to bleeding) have been infected with the AIDS virus either through blood transfusion or the use of blood products. … This group represents a very small percentage.” But why doesn’t Koop tell us that this “very small percentage” is 9,000 hemophiliacs now infected with the AIDS virus?
Koop says: “Some people may have had a blood transfusion prior to March 1985 before we knew how to screen blood for safe transfusion and may have become infected with the AIDS virus. Fortunately there are not now a large number of these cases.” Why didn’t Koop tell us that these infected people whom he describes as not “now” a large number are already at least 29,000 (the 9,000 hemophiliacs plus 20,000 others), and no one knows how many more will ultimately develop AIDS?
More important, why didn’t Koop explain that, although blood-bank authorities did not know how to “screen blood” prior to March 1985, they knew perfectly well ever since 1981 that the AIDS-infectious blood was coming almost entirely from male homosexuals. Why weren’t they barred from donating blood between 1981 and 1983, not only to protect blood recipients from AIDS, but also from Hepatitis B?
Koop admits that the current AIDS test used by blood banks cannot detect newly-infected persons because it takes the antibodies some months to form. Koop says: “This might occur less than once in 100,000 donations.” Why doesn’t Koop tell us that doctors estimate this to be 2,000 persons per year, and that, in addition, a new strain of the AIDS virus is undetectable by the blood-screening test?
Those who know in advance that they will have surgery are now urged to be safe by donating their own blood weeks in advance of the operation. But those who need blood after an emergency accident are out of luck; they have to take their chances from blood banks where the authorities have steadfastly refused to take all possible safety precautions to bar contaminated blood.
Koop says: “The number of people estimated to be infected with the AIDS virus in the United States is about 1.5 million. All of these individuals are assumed to be capable of spreading the virus.”
This is followed by the misleading statements that 20 to 30 percent will come down with AIDS and another 100,000 to 200,000 will come down with ARC (AIDS Related Complex). Any inference that the other million persons who have the AIDS virus will NOT come down with AIDS or ARC simply cannot be proved. In fact, Koop admits that symptoms sometimes take as long as nine years to show up.
When Koop gets to his “look to the future,” he opposes requiring AIDS cases to be reported, or their sex or I.V. drug contacts to be traced, as is the practice with other sexually transmitted diseases. Koop wants to protect the “privacy” and “confidentiality” of the AIDS carriers. Koop doesn’t even mention closing the homosexual bathhouses.
He does, however, come out with the bizarre idea that “early elementary” schoolchildren “who do not yet know they will be homosexual” must be “taught the risk behaviors that expose them to infection with the AIDS virus.” How are they to be taught to avoid getting AIDS? Koop’s message is mixed.
In one place, he seems to urge that teenage boys be taught they should “not have rectal intercourse with other males — it may result in AIDS.” In another part of the report, he appears to urge the teaching of “safe” sodomy by the use of condoms. Koop is out of touch with the real world if he thinks parents will tolerate this kind of “sex education.”
Koop’s most ridiculous statement is that “unreasonable fear can be as crippling as the disease itself.” He admits that 12,500 Americans have already died from AIDS, and predicts that 179,000 will die by 1991, but he fails to cite one person who ever died from fear of AIDS. Koop’s report sounds as though it was written or edited by the National Gay Task Force.
