Shaming people for contracting a disease that we don’t have a cure for is still common today. In part we want to believe that those people are not like us. We like to believe that people somehow brought diseases on themselves, but diseases are mindless and do not judiciously pick the worst people in the world to murder. The more we distance ourselves from diseases and their victims, the harder it becomes to educate people about prevention or raise the funds for a cure (because why would you want to cure something only monstrous people get?). Portraying the afflicted in a way that acknowledges
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