Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Belated World Aids Day Reflection

It was World AIDS Day yesterday, and that seems like a good time to talk a little about AIDS and HIV. Recently a certain celebrity revealed they are HIV positive.  Not because they wished to share this with the world.  No, instead because they had been blackmailed.  Which sucks.  People in the US have their health information protected by HIPAA. Yes, many places have stipulations that if your health could directly impact another persons (through such things as sexual or bodily fluid contact) you have to disclose it to them, but yeah, last time I checked I had not slept with a celebrity, or engaged in any behavior that meant I needed this information.  So that sucks. 
There are many people working so that there are no new people contracting HIV.  This is an absolutely worthy and achievable goal. Whatever you may think about any celebrity's personal life choices, HIV and AIDS are not punishments.  The disease is not specially able to seek out people of a certain stripe and the only reaction on hearing that someone has contracted an illness, even a treatable if incurable one like HIV is sadness.  No one deserves to be sick.  No one has earned illness.  No one.