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Christodora

Questions About Christodora

by Tim Murphy (Goodreads Author)

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why isn't the contamination of the blood supply mentioned?
Tim Murphy Hi guys, this is Tim Murphy, the author. Not sure what your question is getting at, but speaking as someone who's reported on and written about HIV/AI…moreHi guys, this is Tim Murphy, the author. Not sure what your question is getting at, but speaking as someone who's reported on and written about HIV/AIDS for more than 20 years, there was a lag of many years between when HIV started circulating widely among unknowing Americans and in the U.S. blood supply (perhaps as early as the early 1970s), when an epidemic syndrome (AIDS) was identified (1981), when the cause of the syndrome was discovered to be the HIV virus (1984) and when a test was developed to start screening the blood supply (1985). So to suggest that people with HIV/AIDS in any way, shape or form were knowingly contaminating the blood supply simply isn't accurate and contributes to a historical demonization of people for merely having a disease, which is a public-health issue, not a moral one. The vast, vast majority of people who tested positive for HIV after the commercial test was released in 1985 had immense wariness and fear about passing it onto others through actions even as harmless as kissing, in the many years when modes of transmission were uncertain. And today, even though every blood donor's sample is screened for HIV and other blood-borne infectious diseases, gay men are still categorically and needlessly barred from donating blood if they've had sex of any sort within the past 12 months. Prior to last year, they were barred for life. People with HIV/AIDS can be prosecuted in several states for having sex even if they are on HIV meds, which multiple studies have now definitively proven makes the virus untransmissible. Morality and public policy have always lagged far behind science and data when it comes to HIV/AIDS.

I want to thank everyone on Goodreads for the wonderful and warm reviews of the book, but it is also frustrating to see scientifically inaccurate or underinformed claims about what supposedly makes people with HIV/AIDS "unsympathetic beyond recall."

Backup data here:

https://www.aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/...(less)
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