Chicago Tribune - April 28, 2003
Dennis Byrne - A Chicago-area writer and public affairs consultant

I'll say it again, so that it can sink in. Nearly every newborn can be safeguarded from getting the virus that causes AIDS from his or her HIV-infected mother. But the General Assembly refuses to pass a law that would make this so, instead preferring a "compromise" that would affect "only" several dozen children a year.

Only in Springfield would such a deadly calculus be considered welcome.

The compromise is between public health officials who, on one side, believe that all pregnant mothers should be routinely tested for HIV, so that they can receive treatments that virtually eliminate its passage to their children during pregnancy, delivery or afterward, such as through breast feeding. On the other side are "civil libertarians" who believe such testing is an infringement on the mother's right to privacy or physicians who think that such testing would "scare away" mothers who want to keep their "lifestyles" secret. They think HIV-infected mothers have the right to reject the test, and subject their children to a 30 percent chance of being infected with HIV.

So here's the compromise: HIV testing would be routine for infants born to mothers who have not taken an HIV test themselves, even though the mother still could forbid the infant from being tested. But the compromise still does not require the mother to be tested, especially earlier in pregnancy when it would do the most good.

That's right, beyond all logic, a mother by law can choose to keep herself, and everyone else who can help her child, ignorant. By any public health standard, a 30-percent chance of transmitting a deadly disease to anyone is unacceptable, if not criminal. Public policy does not tolerate drunk drivers who pose a 30 percent chance of killing someone. Hospitals do not accept a 30 percent fatal infection rate. Gun-control advocates would go bonkers if each gun sold posed a 30 percent chance of maiming or killing someone. Feminists would not tolerate any environmental factor that would result in a 30 percent breast cancer rate. So by what token does anyone--especially a health professional--justify a 30 percent risk factor for infecting a newborn with a deadly disease?

If you're blind to the human tragedy in all this, then just consider the cost factors.

"Progressive" public-health activists love to talk about prevention. They say, correctly, that stopping people from smoking before they start is much less costly to society than treating smokers after they get cancer. Yet, some health "providers" are willing to accept a 30 percent risk factor for newborns so that the mother can try to--what?--hide her drug use, careless sexual practices or her victimization by an HIV transmitter. What kind of ideology embraces such a barbaric imbalance of rights and responsibilities?

I'll tell you what kind: The same kind that protests the double-murder charge in the Laci Peterson case. Marva Stark, president of the National Organization for Women's Morris County, N.J., chapter, said Peterson's husband Scott should be charged with only one count of murder, because the killing of Laci's unborn son, Connor, could not be considered the killing of a person.

It's the same kind that prompted National Public Radio's commentator Daniel Shore to suggest that the Chinese and United States governments were engaged in some kind of coverup by not quarantining people infected with the deadly SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

This demand for isolation comes from the same ideological corner that flipped over the mere suggestion that HIV should be subject to standard public health measures, such as contact tracing. The same ideology fills my mailbox with charges that abortion opponents care more about fetuses than about babies after they are born. If there ever was a more monumental demonstration of uncaring for babies than this "compromise," I have not heard of it.

It's the same ideology that condemns the "insensitive" spending of money in the name of freedom and security, but denounces President Bush for not spending enough ($15 billion) to prevent and treat AIDS in Africa. When, that is, they oppose a simple test that is 100 percent effective at home.

E-mail: dbyrne1942@earthlink.net

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