Kimberly Bergalis is famous because she reportedly contracted the HIV virus from her dentist, who died of AIDS. She’s famous because she’s thought to be the first person to get AIDS from a health-care worker. She and her family are now fighting an angry battle, lambasting public-health officials while calling for the testing of all health-care workers for the AIDS virus. I find Kimberly Bergalis’s personal story tragic beyond words. But I find the way she is being used politically just as horrifying. There’s a larger picture obscured by the sorrow Bergalis evokes in her campaign. Why is it that when a young heterosexual like her gets sick from AIDS, the floor of the Senate rings with action, while when homosexuals and drug users suffer they are insulted, quarantined and hated?
Kimberly Bergalis is a symbol of the threat posed by health-care professionals with HIV–but she also represents prejudices that are far more dangerous:
Like so much of American society’ there is a multitier class system of people with AIDS. The “haves” are those with public sympathy, the “have-nots” those who are hated. Children are the greatest martyrs. What is more tragic than a helpless baby with AIDS? Next on the hierarchy come young adults–chaste, needless to say-infected by blood transfusions. The last group of good, innocent people with AIDS are the beautiful heterosexuals, victims like Kimberly Bergalis who are seen as receiving the virus from an evil, cavalier infector.
Has anyone written about dentist David Acer, who no doubt suffered horribly while dying.? Does anybody care? Of course not. David Acer was cast as the villain in this public drama. Typecast because he was gay, like the majority of those who have died from AIDS in this country. That made his death no cause for outrage or sorrow. The fact that David Acer died from AIDS is unimportant to the public. The fact that tens of thousands of gay men and drug users have died is unimportant. Let one wholesome young woman get AIDS and the public goes berserk.
Much of the coverage about Kimberly Bergalis has focused on the man who gave her the virus and who may have infected four others. No one has yet proved how the virus was transmitted; if Acer knew he was sick and continued to treat patients knowing he might infect them, his actions deserve to be condemned. But education, not indiscriminate anger aimed at all who have AIDS, is the key. Hysteria over hypothetical scenarios only further stigmatizes those who most need help–people who are suffering from the disease.
It doesn’t matter how people get the virus. It matters that they have it. We must show compassion for everyone who has AIDS–not just those who are judged to have picked it up arbitrarily. It’s arbitrary for everybody who has it. And the emphasis on Bergalis as innocent receiver of the virus from a gay man subtly emphasizes a harmful belief-. that many people with AIDS deserved the disease.
Kimberly Bergalis will die a martyr. Her death will trigger a spate of articles and television reports about her courageous battle with the disease. I find this lionization jarring when I consider the repercussions. Her story has fomented a climate of irrational hysteria about people with AIDS and the “threat” they pose to the so-called general population. Worst of all, her life has inspired the crusade to ban HIV-infected health workers. Her campaign is really not about protecting those who are not infected-but about punishing those who are.
When will people start to realize that her family’s campaign has already harmed the lives of thousands of health-care workers unnecessarily? An amendment proposed by Sen. Jesse Helms (which would imprison doctors who do not reveal their HIV status to patients) is based on assumptions about the virus that are damaging to all health-care workers. Some doctors have already been forced to give up their work. Public hysteria is pushing gay dentists and other health-care workers into the closet, whether they are HIV positive or not. The fact is, health-care workers are more at risk of receiving the virus than passing it on. They should be applauded for their work-not punished. Testing of health-care workers is a bad idea. The cost–estimated as high as $1.5 billion annually-would be better spent on education and care. The virus can exist in the body up to six months before registering on a test. Infected workers could test negative. Finally, the very act of testing makes the infinitesimal risks posed by infected workers seem far greater than they actually are.
There’s a war going on and has been for about 10 years. I believe the spread of the disease would have been halted if people had cared earlier. And that there might be a cure today if people had cared earlier. But they didn’t. They didn’t because the people dying were distasteful to those who make decisions about public health and to the people in the press-those same people doing their best today to elevate Kimberly Bergalis to the status of war heroine.
The real villains are hatred and ignorance, The heroes-and the solutions to the spread of AIDS–are love and education. I see the Bergalis campaign motivated by neither. At a time when compassion and understanding are called for, we must learn the simple facts and apply enough simple reason to pass decent laws and care for all–those who are infected and those who are not–who are enduring this terrible epidemic together.
