Ask the average American what they know about AIDS or HIV, and you’ll get a lot of different responses. Almost no one will say, “Never heard of it,” but that doesn’t mean they know the truth. Lack of knowledge about HIV/AIDS is just one of the myriad challenges faced by the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin (ARCW).
“While there is a greater acceptance of people with HIV today, our patients and clients continue to face daunting discrimination, stigma and bias,” says Mike Gifford, ARCW president and CEO. “Discrimination remains prevalent, especially in healthcare … we have far to go in fully embracing people with HIV.”
In many important ways, the American public’s views about HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) have evolved over time. A 2012 national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post about the public’s understanding of HIV showed that acceptance of people living with HIV has transformed, for the most part, from fear into sympathy and understanding, to the point where a large majority of Americans claim they would feel comfortable working with—or having their children taught by—someone who’s HIV-positive. But that same study also showed alarming ignorance is still widespread.
As recently as five years ago, 34% of Americans still held major misconceptions about HIV transmission, such as beliefs that sharing a drinking glass, swimming pool or a toilet seat with an HIV-positive person could lead to contracting the virus. For the most part, views about HIV usually depend on economic and social factors and, unfortunately, HIV continues to have a disproportionate impact upon the poor—those with the least amount of access to decent education programs and to quality public healthcare. That most-affected part of society, alas, continues to harbor the most inaccurate ideas about HIV/AIDS. Without a doubt, widespread public misconceptions ultimately lead to stigmatization and isolation of those afflicted by HIV/AIDS and, worst of all, to the continuance of the HIV epidemic.
HIV’s Origins
The HIV virus, as far as science has been able to tell, originated among non-human primates in West-Central Africa—quietly spreading through jungle populations of chimpanzees, mangabeys, monkeys, baboons and so forth—as what is termed SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus). This ancestral virus is at least 100,000 years old, but very well could be several million years old. SIV likely took eons to mutate into relative harmlessness towards its hosts, but the species of primate called Homo sapiens should not be comforted by Nature’s “taming” of SIV—lulled, perhaps, into thinking that this might well be in HIV’s near future, as well.
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“Don’t expect human evolution to unfold in a timeframe that will do anything good for us,” evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey said at a 2010 meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences. “We’re not going to evolve adaptations that will mitigate this virus in any acceptable timescale, so we need other solutions.”
As reported in the journal Nature, “Most researchers agree that the pandemic strain of HIV that currently infects more than 33 million people worldwide started in Central Africa around 100 years ago, when hunters contracted the virus through tainted bush meat.” Thus, through hunting and killing SIV-infected primates, humans ingested the simian virus. SIV is largely a weak virus that is relatively easily fended off by a healthy human immune system, but frequent, repeated exposure to SIV among a human population, over time, allowed SIV to mutate into its deadly, pandemic-causing progeny—HIV.
With European colonialism came urbanization, and with it an increase in poverty, exploitation, sexual promiscuity, prostitution and STDs. By the early 1900s, colonial cities in Africa were noteworthy for their high levels of prostitution and genital ulcer infections—in 1928, as much as 45% of the female population of the Belgian Congo’s capital (modern-day Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo), were involved in the sex trade and, by 1933, about 33% of all of the city’s residents were infected by syphilis. The first well-documented case of HIV in a human was in 1959—in the Belgian Congo.
HIV-1—the most widespread and pathogenic strain of the virus—is believed to have arrived in Haiti around 1967, introduced by an unknown person who took the infectious ticking time bomb home with him after working in the Congo for some period of time. From Haiti, it is now believed, another unknown person brought HIV to the United States. The vast majority of the world’s cases of AIDS outside sub-Saharan Africa can be traced, ultimately, to whoever that person was. HIV eventually entered gay male communities in large U.S. cities; once that happened, an epidemic was not long delayed. The word began to spread and so did fear, stupidity, hatred and bigotry.
Attacking the Victims
HIV/AIDS spread rapidly through the early ’80s. By 1985, there had been more than 13,000 documented AIDS-related deaths in the U.S.—the same year that President Ronald Reagan managed to mention the word “AIDS” in public for the very first time—and that only when prompted by a reporter’s question.
Given the fact that the spread of HIV/AIDS seemed to emerge solely out of the LGBTQ community (primarily among gay males), and that sexual transmission was known to be the prevailing way of acquiring HIV, moralizing conservatives—especially on the Christian right—were quick to viciously pounce on the victims.
The late Rev. Jerry Falwell infamously proclaimed that “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.” His colleague in hateful fearmongering, Pat Robertson, chimed in: “Homosexuals want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers.”
In a 1992 national poll, a startling 36% of Americans believed that HIV/AIDS might be “God’s punishment” for “immoral” sexual behavior; a more recent poll (2013) still showed that some 14% of Americans continue to believe in this notion—despite decades of HIV/AIDS education and research that, most assuredly, point elsewhere. Many Americans continue, in fact, to be judgmental toward those living with HIV/AIDS. Continuing to blame and shame the pandemic’s victims, 65% of Americans believe those of their fellow citizens with HIV/AIDS became infected due to their own irresponsible behavior.
In a 2013 episode of his “700 Club” TV show, Pat Robertson stated: “There are laws now—I think the homosexual community has put these draconian laws on the books—that prohibit people from discussing this particular affliction [HIV/AIDS]. You can tell somebody you had a heart attack, you can tell them they’ve got high blood pressure, but you can’t tell anybody you’ve got AIDS.” Robertson continued: “You know what they do in San Francisco? Some in the gay community there, they want to get people. So if they got the stuff, they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger,” he said. “Really. It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder.”
Lamenting the ongoing bigotry and ignorance, ARCW’s Mike Gifford remarked, “For all the improvement our society has made in addressing the HIV epidemic, there are unfortunately still ugly instances of hatred, discrimination and stigma—like Georgia state Rep. Betty Price and her calls for quarantining people with HIV. Those instances also extend to people at greatest risk for HIV, such as efforts to discriminate against transgender individuals in the use of bathrooms, service in the military and other ways. These are examples of serious barriers to inclusion, acceptance, good health and winning the fight against AIDS.”
Lest we become complacent—thinking that anti-LGBTQ bigotry and HIV/AIDS patient shaming and blaming have, or might soon, totally disappear—consider the June 2017 mass quitting of six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA)—a council that was created during Bill Clinton’s first term in 1995 that makes recommendations, through the secretary of Health and Human Services, to the president. Our current occupant of the White House, it seems, has no use for the board.
“The Trump administration has no strategy to address the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic, seeks zero input from experts to formulate HIV/AIDS policy, and, most concerning, pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV/AIDS and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease,” wrote Scott Schoettes of Lambda Legal and a PACHA member. The council had had only one meeting (in March) since Donald Trump’s election. What’s more, Trump saw to it that the Office of National AIDS Policy website was taken down shortly after he took office; he thus far has also failed to appoint anyone to lead the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.
ARCW Joins the Fight
“ARCW is constantly evolving to meet the needs of people living with HIV and the people in our communities who are at risk for contracting HIV,” says Gifford. “Since our inception as a social services and HIV prevention agency in 1984, we have grown into America’s only HIV Medical Home—integrating comprehensive HIV health and social services along with powerful HIV prevention strategies. We are grateful for the opportunity to be the largest provider of HIV health care in the state of Wisconsin … The driver of our innovation is a commitment to making sure that no matter where someone lives, the color of their skin, whom they love or how much money they have in their pocket, everyone with HIV can live a long, healthy life, and that the number of new HIV infections continues to go down.”
Trump’s election (and concomitant rise of the loud and angry populist right) has come at a bad time for ARCW and for those it serves. “We are possibly at the most critical juncture ever in the fight against AIDS,” Gifford says. “We have all of the knowledge and tools necessary to defeat the epidemic; the question is do we have the political and societal will to win.” He continues, “The great health care debate that engulfs our country calls us to remember what is at stake for people with HIV. Strengthening the Affordable Care Act is truly a life-and-death discussion for people with HIV and individuals at risk of contracting HIV.”
Today, ARCW’s “knowledge and tools” show how it has been able, through hard work and dedication, to expand its services to Wisconsin residents. The ARCW Medical Center (820 N. Plankinton Ave.) is a fully integrated healthcare facility. Among their many services to the public, ARCW offers HIV, hepatitis C and STD testing, PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis—an HIV prevention strategy for those at high risk for contracting the virus), dental care, mental health therapy, pharmacological services and housing assistance to its patients. ARCW also provides food pantries, legal assistance and social work case management with 10 offices and clinics located throughout the state—from Milwaukee to Superior and from La Crosse to Green Bay.
ARCW’s stated mission of “a world without AIDS” where “everyone with HIV disease will live a long and healthy life,” is a long way from being fulfilled. Medical research continues around the world to find a cure and, for all the remarkable progress made since its disastrous spread across the globe, the most realistic assessments are that we are still decades away from even the possibility of developing a cure or vaccine for HIV. If ever.
“The French co-discoverer of HIV [Françoise Barré-Sinoussi] was quoted in her last professional interview saying a cure for HIV very well may be impossible. This bleak assessment from one of the world’s foremost minds on HIV has ignited an ever greater passion for us to provide excellent care for all and aggressive HIV prevention,” says Gifford. “HIV remains a top public health emergency in our country.”
In 2016, about 36.7 million people worldwide were living with HIV, resulting in a million deaths. Between its discovery and 2014, AIDS has caused the deaths of some 39 million people. According to recent numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 1.1 million Americans are currently HIV-positive and, just two years ago, more than 18,000 people in the U.S. received an AIDS diagnosis.
Globally, the most common means of HIV transmission is through sexual contact between people of the opposite sex, but the virus cares not about your ethnicity, age, sex, sexual orientation, religion, political party, nationality, income or education.
Thankfully, organizations like ARCW continue to fight HIV and AIDS with everything they can muster in a life-and-death battle. Their fight is the fight of all of humanity.
For more information about ARCW and its services, call 800-359-9272 or visit arcw.org.
