The Fall 1989 edition of LEADERSHIP included an article “When AIDS Comes to Church” by William E. Amos, Jr. Among the responses we received to that issue was this letter from a LEADERSHIP reader who has experience on the other side of this subject.
In 1982, I was employed as director of nurses at a small rural hospital in Washington State. My wife, an LPN, has a rare form of hemophilia found in women. Since she was to undergo a hysterectomy, she required a special blood product to prevent excessive bleeding. During surgery she received 70 units, which I’d ordered from a Portland, Oregon, blood bank.
At the time, there was very little information about AIDS, and no blood products were regularly tested until May 1985.
To make a long story short, Bonnie and I are both infected with the AIDS virus received from the contaminated blood products. I have not been able to work for the past five years due to the disabling effects of this virus. Bonnie is disabled, too.
It was more than three years before we were able to be tested via the ELISA test. We learned that up to 30 percent of known AIDS victims will not show a positive reaction. Thousands of people carry the AIDS virus unknowingly, because they were tested as false negative on the ELISA test.
Both of us have been negative on the ELISA tests for the past several years. Nevertheless we have most of the symptoms of AIDS-related complex (ARC), which is the precursor of full-blown AIDS.
Even though medical literature has pointed out these facts for at least the past five years, not many people are aware of them. The fact that Ruth, in the story by Pastor Amos, tested negative actually means nothing, due to the unpredictable nature of the virus in incubation.
The fact that Tom and Ruth practiced “safe sex” is no guarantee that she was not already infected. Condoms themselves are not a completely safe method against infection anyway. Ruth is automatically in a high-risk category, and as such, the only “safe sex” is no sex. We hope and pray that she is not infected, but it only takes once to become infected.
Our concern is not with the article’s generally excellent and important content but with the incomplete information concerning AIDS.
I personally appreciated Pastor Amos’s handling of Tom and Ruth as “infected believers.” I admire his way of handling confidentiality within his church, especially the way he handled Ruth’s situation.
Bonnie and I went through a different scenario. In 1986, knowing we were dying slowly, we “got right with God” in every way we could, including joining a local church here in Spokane. We were about to be baptized after our public affirmation of faith, when I felt impressed to tell the pastor of our illness.
Because our test results were negative, I specifically told him that we might have AIDS, that no positive diagnosis had been made.
A few days later, the pastor told us that after consulting doctors and lawyers he felt the congregation would have to vote whether we could attend their services, despite the fact that this would violate our confidentiality.
Since we had children in the same school as many of the church members, we felt a public vote was unacceptable. It could promote discriminatory actions against our children if it were common knowledge. Not being able to join the church, we were all classified as “ill and housebound” on the Sunday school register.
We have been hurt a great deal spiritually by these actions. We’ve tried to forgive and love that congregation and have sought other churches in which to worship, primarily for our children’s benefit, but surprisingly the only church that would accept us without qualms has been the Metropolitan Community Church, which because of its stance on homosexuality is unacceptable to us (for our children’s sake, at the very least).
It is too bad there are not more Pastor Amoses around who can accept and truly help those who are suffering and may be infectious.
-Michael Turner
Spokane, Washington
The editors, wanting to verify this information, asked Anita Moreland Smith, vice-president of Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy (ASAP, P.O. Box 17433, Washington, D.C. 20041; 703-471-7350), to comment on the letter. She wrote: “The ELISA is one of a series of tests used to determine whether one is infected with HIV (the virus that eventually causes AIDS). Because the medical community has developed improved testing algorithms and standards since 1985, AIDS experts agree that nearly all false positive and most false negative results have been eliminated. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the HIV virus, the tests available today are not accurate 100 percent of the time.
“We agree with the writer that knowledge of medical facts about HIV is critical for Christian leaders attempting to minister to others. We work with many churches as they attempt to educate their congregations and develop policy.”
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