INTIMIDATED DOCTORS

Back in the 1970's and 1980's, doctors on the east and west coasts were terrified. And their cowardice gagged their mouths.

To understand the why's and wherefores of all of this, we need to go back to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City during those decades. It was then that the medical profession was realizing that they were about to have an epidemic on their hands and they were scared.

In the spring of 1983, there were 1,500 diagnosed cases of AIDS, but the problem was that the rate of infection was relentlessly doubling every six months. Researchers hadn't isolated the AIDS virus and if you can't isolate it, you can't kill it and you can't cure it.

But that's not the real story. By the late 70's, although they hadn't isolated the virus, researchers knew exactly, absolutely, beyond the shadow of a doubt, what was causing the AIDS epidemic--AIDS was a sexually transmitted disease which aggressive promiscuous behavior was turning into an epidemic.

Knowing the cause, they needed to make it known to warn a certain segment of the public. But that never happened. Had you been in those cities back then and had you visited a city clinic, you would find no pamphlets which gave the needed warning. Any pamphlet you came across would only say that AIDS might be prevented by more sleep and more exercise. The doctors, the politicians, and the public health officials were lying and they knew it. But they were scared.

There were precious few speakers and writers who tried to warn the people and the few who did were intimidated, called names, and shamed publicly. They were accused of being "homophobic fascists," among other things. Pickets surrounded their businesses. The attacks became so bad that one speaker who was going to debate the subject in San Francisco didn't show up for the forum because she was concerned for her safety.

One man who dared debate the subject and tell the truth before a live audience of a hundred angry people was vilified and at the conclusion of the meeting feared that violence was going to break out. Out of the one hundred in the room, no one stood with him, not one doctor, not one politician, not one public health official. In fact, the top official of the Centers for Disease Control who remained mute, later said, "We didn't want to be seen as interfering with an alternative lifestyle." (We note how the intimidated official bowdlerized his statement to say, "alternative lifestyle.")

Yet contrast this with the polio epidemics which appeared in the U. S. from time to time. The medical profession and public health officials warned the population by broadcasting the best information they had far and wide, informing as many people as possible of whatever preventative measures they thought necessary, even to the point of city officials closing city swimming pools. 

On the economic front, health aside, the care of AIDS patients and other related diseases was costing the taxpayers a million dollars day. Still, you could hear the crickets chirping. Heeding the Bible could have stopped the epidemic in its tracks, but no, the society demanded its "alternative lifestyle" as the euphemism called sin. 

Any attempt to close the San Francisco bath houses, all of which were accelerating the epidemic, was met with stubborn and successful resistance. Neither the politicians, the medical personnel, nor the public health officials spoke up and the reason was fear.

Why such opposition against the truth? It was because the homosexual community didn't want anything, anybody, even the truth, to taint their image and curtail their lifestyle. Most of them knew the truth but marched demanding the government find a cure and blaming President Reagan of murder and genocide for withholding government money to fund the search for a cure. (He hadn't.) It was as if the Great White Father in Washington should be the one to find the cure. Their accusations were irrational hyperbole coupled with faux moral outrage.

There's an anthropological lesson in all of this: Romans 1:26-27 speaks to the point about the human being--"For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in own persons the due penalty of their error."

"And receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error" nails it, as does Romans 1:19: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness."

They had rather suffer and die and their friends and family suffer and die rather than admit the truth and abandon their sin. And suffer and die they did. By 1994, nearly 200,000 had died from the epidemic. Sin's payday was all around them, yet they continued to suppress the truth and vilify anyone who tried to tell it.Yet, by following two verses from the Bible, 200,000 people would not have died.

The sin nature of the human being is tough, tough indeed.What did the prophet Jeremiah say? Didn't he say, "“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?"