TEXT C
AIDS is not transmitted through routine, nonintimate contact in the home or the workplace. Transmission from one person to another appears to require either intimate sexual contact or exchange of blood or body fluids (whether from contaminated hypodermic needles or syringes, transfusions of infected blood, or transmission from an infected mother to her child before or during birth).
As of April 1988, 98,000 cases of AIDS had been identified in the United States, and more than 21,000 persons had died of AIDS. Among those who died were well-known figures in the worlds of politics, the arts, entertainment, business, and sports. As has been well publicized, the high-risk groups most in danger of contracting AIDS are homosexual and bisexual men, intravenous (IV) drug users, and their sexual partners. Recently, there has been increasing evidence that AIDS is a particular danger for the urban poor, in good part because of transmission via IV drug use. Whereas blacks and Hispanics represent about 20 percent of the nation’s population, they constitute 40 percent of all Americans with AIDS. Moreover, 91 percent of infants with AIDS are nonwhite.
According to government projections, the AIDS epidemic will achieve even more distressing proportions by the early 1990s. It is estimated that 54,000 to 64,000 Americans will die from AIDS in 1991. By that time, some 270,000 Americans will have AIDS and 1.5 million Americans will be infected with the HIV virus. Just as the number of AIDS cases will skyrocket by the 1990s, so too will the costs of the disease.
On the micro level of social interaction, it has been widely forecast that AIDS will lead to a more conservative sexual climate among both homosexuals and heterosexuals —in which people will be much more cautious about involvement with new partners. Yet, in a survey in early 1987, 92 percent of the respondents claimed that AIDS would have no impact on how they conduct their lives. In line with these data, a long-term study of the wives of hemophiliacs with AIDS revealed a common failure to practice "safer sex" by using condoms —a failure which increases the women’s likelihood of contracting AIDS.
While some Americans may refuse to change their sexual behavior, there is little doubt that AIDS has created a climate of fear in the United States and elsewhere. The media have reported numerous stories of people acting out of terror of AIDS. In New Jersey, a 9-year-old boy whose sister had an AIDS-related complex went to school one-day, only to discover that more than half of the 2000 students at the school had been kept home simply because he would be there. Not surprisingly, a content analysis of 1986 periodicals and books by the World Future Society found AIDS to be people’s fourth greatest fear —behind economic collapse, nuclear war, and environmental damage.
In this climate of fear, there has been increasing harassment of homosexual males. Gay rights leaders believe that the concept of homosexuals as "disease carriers" has contributed to violent incidents directed at persons known or suspected to be gay. Fears about AIDS have also led to growing discrimination within major social institutions of the United States. For example, people with AIDS have faced discrimination in employment, housing, and insurance.
Social interaction in the workplace has undoubtedly been affected both by the danger and the reality of AIDS. For example, Wells Fargo and Company allows employees with AIDS to continue on the job unless they have other communicable diseases. The company conducts briefing sessions in which coworkers are educated about AIDS and are reassured about their safety. Yet role conflict can arise as an employee is torn between loyalty to an infected friend or coworker and fear of contracting the disease and transmitting it to loved ones.
In the U.S. ______ percent of the infants with AIDS are white.