AIDS and the Politics of Fear: On World AIDS Day consider replacing ignorance with open-mindedness

By Sky Gilbert
The National Post (Canada) 1 Dec. 1998

I remember a particularly sadistic elementary school teacher. Once a week he would march into our classroom and demand that five students place their open hands on their desks. Then he would beat each of the exposed hands once with the strap. "That's for nothing!" he'd say.

The implication was clear and threatening. If a student could receive a single strap for "nothing," then what for a real crime? Thankfully, our schools no longer use the fear of corporal punishment as a teaching method. Why then, do we continue to use fear as a tactic in our health and social policy?

Since the first discovery of what was called a mysterious "gay cancer" in 1981, the politics of AIDS has been ruled by fear. Fear of disease, death, difference, and ultimately fear of touch and human love. Early statistics implied AIDS would soon become the most devastating infectious disease since the bubonic plague. For instance, The New York Times stated in 1985, "1,000,000 Americans . . . are believed to have been infected with the AIDS virus, and the total could be climbing by 1,000 to 2,000 per day." These fear-mongering statistics, like so many associated with the disease, proved to be false.

On the contrary, while new AIDS cases increased 60% in 1987, the Centers for Disease Control reported that they plummeted to 34% in 1988 and finally to 5% in 1991. Every death is a devastating one, and a disease like AIDS deserves generous government support. But these statistics are certainly atypical of a "plague." The exponential increases in AIDS deaths have simply not materialized. Some claim worldwide infection rates are still on the increase. But since 1993, a tiny minority (3%) of all those diagnosed with HIV die annually of AIDS. It's important to note reports of massive increases are invariably based on numbers from Africa, where expensive HIV tests are often not used. Statistics can be easily manipulated. And those who wish to warn us about the dangers of AIDS have invariably used statistics to frighten us into submission and abstinence.

My argument is simply; it cannot be done.

People cannot be frightened away from having sex. They cannot be frightened away from loving or touching each other. In fact, when fear is used as a method of social and health control, it invariably backfires. Historically, the fight against syphilis tells us this. Despite fear mongering about sex, Victorian private perversions flourished. Most modern day parents understand this principle. A dramatic lecture on the evils of smoking and the tortures of hell will certainly frighten an impressionable child. It is far more likely though, that the child will ultimately develop a fascination (and perhaps even an addiction) for that which is been so dramatically forbidden.

From the beginning, AIDS fear has been used as a method of social control. Everyone -- from public health officials, to homophobes -- have jumped on the "fear" bandwagon. One can agree or disagree with the goals of those who manipulate the politics of fear. But it's their methodology I challenge. Ultimately, when fear is used as a method of social control, it destroys the dignity of life.

A human life is a sacred thing. It is a complex, violent, beautiful, tangled and contradictory mess of love, mistakes, missed chances, and ecstatic discovery. Every time we use an AIDS death as a moral warning, when we wag our finger and say -- "Watch out, or you'll end up like him!" we desecrate the purity and sanctity of a human life.

More than that, we threaten freedom to live, freedom to love, freedom to enjoy a different "lifestyle."

What then, do we put in place of ignorance, hysteria and fear? Let me suggest something radical: the pursuit of knowledge.

Can science unravel the mysteries of AIDS? Right now, the medical establishment offers both promising cures and horrifying failures. For every hopeful success with a new "protease inhibitor" drug, comes the horrifying memory of dangerous AZT. But new avenues are opening. Long-term survivors abound. Most city dwellers (whether aware of it or not) know at least one person who has been HIV positive for 15 years with no symptoms. Why do some of those infected with HIV live a normal lifespan? No one knows. But we must find out. A significant percentage of babies born from infected mothers are miraculously virus free. Why? And new Canadian AIDS organizations like HEAL (Health Education AIDS Liaison) question the very origin of AIDS and the nature of the virus itself.

An open mind is our only hope. Fear is our only real enemy, on World AIDS Day. So please, please, remember those who have died. But not as chilling warning signals. Rather as rare and special individuals, first warriors in a battle between fear and something which is as rare as twin snowflakes; a mind open enough to allow truth to enter.

Sky Gilbert is a playwright, poet and novelist.