There was no treatment and the Navy certainly didn't have anything like a treatment. What the Navy did was invite HIV people to the world. It turned out that they were complicit in giving HIV to many servicemen via their hospitals and poor sanitary practices. That was what shed the stigma from that particular social disease. It was no longer just fags getting sick, it was warrant officers and their children who got contaminated blood transfusions in Navy hospitals.
As a CO I got to give the bad news to a man that he had tested positive. It took about a month for his worlds to end. Let go by the Navy, let go by his wife, let go by the nuclear power station where he worked as an electrician and let go by his church which dropped him overnight. There was nothing at all I could do about all that despair. He held on for dear life but when his church dropped him it was over. A month from opening that letter until the end. 30 days.
4 comments:
I put the results of HIV/AIDS being so pervasive in our world today directly on the CDC and the politicians who chose to avoid the hard call(totally apolitical on this subject) on what will turn out to be the biggest sin ever committed in the name of "morality". Hemophilia became a death sentence(see law of unintended consequences).
Diseases of that nature usually passed thru oceanic ports of entry as that is the prefered passage of the poor who usually cannot afford an airline seat. The wealthy ignored any possibility of passing on an pervasive infectious disease. Almost everybody ignores calls to have a care for their fellow man. Ports up the Mississippi River in Louisiana in the 1970's always had "interesting" disease outbreaks after shipping arrived from African ports.
Sadly, that sailor is added to a very lengthy butchers bill which most people still do not acknowledge.
When it hit our shores I thought of the old days and quarantine. Modern new yorkers don't think of that anymore and they write the law.
some years ago, my neighbors son(5) and daughter(9) died of HIV. they were both hemophiliac. As a family, they were destroyed. probably the biggest reason I am aware of the tragedy of it all.
It was nothing but a tragedy.
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