World AIDS Day

Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day. Whether by chance or intention, my Dictionary.com word-for-the-day is nosophopia.


Nosophobia is a specific phobia, an irrational fear of contracting a disease, from Greek νόσος nosos for "disease" (as the 1913 Webster's Dictionary put it, "morbid dread of a disease"). Primary fears of this kind are fear of contracting pulmonary tuberculosis, venereal diseases, cancer, and heart diseases.

Please note that the diseases feared are real, serious, potentially deadly. The problem is the irrational nature of the phobia, not the prudent measures taken to avoid disease.

At certain periods, we seem to contract a social nosophobia -- most recently with regard to Ebola. In the early days, nay, years of AIDS, this was the case.  

A friend who was a nurse at Boston City Hospital  in 1984 told of coming to work one day to discover all the nurses wearing masks and rubber gloves and all but HazMat suits when they went into a room that housed a young man who had been admitted the day before because of an automobile accident. When my friend asked what had happened, he was told that some of the man's visitors seemed to be gay, and so the staff assumed the victim must be gay, and they then assumed that if he was gay, he had HIV and they had to take precautions. 

Medical personnel are much at risk, of course, and prudence is to be commended. But the train of logic in this case did seem to be running the risk of derailment by excessive fear.

In 1985, I learned that a friend had contracted the virus. He died about 18 months after being diagnosed. He was the first person I knew personally to die of that sad plague. I must say that his experience was most queer at the time -- he was surrounded by loving friends, family and religious community, one that cared for him tenderly and kept him at home until he died. Almost everyone else he knew who had fallen ill had been rejected, often literally tossed out of home by family. His dying and the love that surrounded him are still a lesson to me of how to treat people.

For Kenneth and all who have gone before us, peace. For those living with the virus today, peace. For those working to find a definitive solution to the problem, peace. 

And for all those who live in fear, whether of disease or anything else, peace.