AIDS Alibis: Sex, Drugs, and Crime in the Americas

9. Desperate

You don't go down with a hard, shortfall-you just sort of shuffle along And loosen your load ofthe moral code, tiLLyou can't teLL the rightfrom the wrong. - Clarence Leonard Hay I W e would like to believe that people who know that they are Hlv-positive and understand how HIV is transmitted would do all in their power to avoid infecting others. This belief underlies public health and civil rights thinking about the reasonableness of keeping the identity of those who are infected private. That people mean well and have the wherewithal to protect themselves and others is a belief, not a fact. We really don't have empirical evidence that it is true. What's more, we know it is still common for people to engage in unprotected sex and shoot drugs with used needles, and like all humans, some of them are in the habit of showing extreme disregard for the well-being of their intimates, associates, and customers. After all, government-approved businesses that collect and sell blood products around the world have shown that they are capable of extreme disregard for the lives of their customers. In Canada, Germany, Japan, and England, top executives of national blood III Copyrighted Material • CHAPTER 9 III J: II: U companies have been convicted for Hlv-related decisions that erred on the side of greed rather than caution. Hemophiliacs and their families in the United States have so far been unsuccessful in making decision makers publicly accountable for infecting 80 percent of those who received HIV-tainted factor (anti-hemophilia blood coagulation factor concentrate) between 1980 and 1985. During this period, the CDC had warned the Red Cross that there was evidence that an unknown fatal organism may be transmitted through blood and that it would be prudent to track it with the test for hepatitis B. But the Red Cross didn't use the hepatitis B test. It was too expensive. Scientific evidence had not yet solidified to their satisfaction (HIV had not yet been identified). They also chose not to warn any of their customers that the expensive blood products, which presumably would extend their lives, might in fact kill them. Hemophiliacs who have filed suit within the United States are convinced that by January 1983 the manufacturers of factor should have fully understood the risks involved. They argue that manufacturers should have taken steps to ensure the safety of blood products and, at the very least, should have warned hemophiliacs of the dangers before March 1985, when they began screening all blood for HIV (Shilts 1987, Andersen 1994).2 The point is, prostitutes, junkies, and other people "in the life" don't have a corner on knowingly or intentionally putting other people at risk ofHIV infection. Scientists, doctors, and executives who have great responsibilities and who have received the highest rewards are capable of being reckless with our fate, causing widespread damage as a result. At least most prostitutes and junkies have had the kind of hard-luck lives that you could believe might generate occasional depraviry. They don't seem nearly as evil as some spoon-fed white collar types. Don't you agree? Back to the life. . .. 132 Copyrighted Material There's Nothing Going On in Iowa DESPERATE . n :II There was that initial feeling of disconcertedness that accompanied my search for the Adam's apple, sign ofthe biological male. She came into the northside field station in Chicago with an old Italian man. They were homeless and did not meet official AIDS project criteria, but I paid her for an informal interview. Her description ofthe chaos, violence, and unpredictabiliry ofher life and the lives of those whom she was close to underscores how people who are sick, poverrystricken , and narcotized might not even begin to struggle with the practical and ethical aspects of controlling the transmission of HIV between themselves and others. • She said she still felt a bit faint. A trick hit her with a tire iron and she got twenty-seven stitches. Icouldn't see them, she said, because they were under her wig. She said she hadn't had a bath in over a month, since her man ran off with the money. She found him again and now they wanted to try and stick together. She turned a trick to get three dollars so she could go to a clinic. She wasn't feeling well...