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Wednesdav. July 24. 1991 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Mandatory AIDS tests Senate vote for testing of health-care workers provides no protection from diseased patients
The U.S. Senate voted last week that healthcare workers who are tested HIV-positive are committing a crime if they perform high-risk surgical procedures without informing patients of their infections.
It also adopted an amendment that requires mandatory AIDS tests for all surgeons and dentists who perform high-risk operations. If the test results are positive, the surgeons and dentists have to stop performing such procedures.
The Senate's actions can be attributed to Kimberley Bergalis, a 23-year-old woman who was diagnosed with AIDS three years ago. She is one of five patients who are thought to have contracted AIDS from their dentist, Dace Alder.
At first glance, this seems like an appropriate solution to the growing problem of AIDS in the United States. After all, doctors are supposed to save lives, not take them. And because of their continuous contact with large numbers of people, doctors should responsibly take extra precautions — or face the consequences.
By imposing mandatory AIDS testing and convicting those health-care workers who do not inform patients of their infection, the Senate's actions might prevent transmissions of this sort
from occurring.
However, there are other factors to consider. Out of 182,000 documented AIDS cases reported to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, the only instance of AIDS transmission from a health-care worker to patients was that of Acer and his five patients. Scientists have been unable to determine how Acer transmitted the disease.
And, mandatory AIDS testing might give patients a false sense of security. Because the virus can lay dormant from three months to 10 years, a person can be infected and not test positive for some time. This raises the question of how often health-care workers would have to be tested. Every year? Every month? Every week?
However, the bottom line is that the Senate's actions are discriminatory. Health-care workers have an equal chance of catching the virus from their patients, but they would not be given the same kind of protection. Patients would not required to be tested for AIDS before they see their doctors. And it would not be illegal for patients to withhold the information that they are infected with the AIDS virus. If Congress decides to pass a law, it should be an equal one.
Jennifer Schultz for the editorial board
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Protest had two sides
I'm writing about the Page 1 photograph and caption story you ran about the protests about homosexual activity at a Topeka park.
I am a KU student. I am one of the people protesting the public homosexual activity, and Fred Phelps is my father.
The story you ran was unprofessionally one-sided and downright negligent in its failure to convey the true nature of the events or underlying issues.
It is unfortunate that the Kansan is promoting its ultraliberal agenda.
With a highly acclaimed school of journalism on campus, you would think that you could do a little better. But I don't think the paper doesn't speak for all students.
We are staging ongoing peaceful protestst GagePark. Eachweekseveral dozen people show up to picket with us.
We are objecting to public sexual activity at the park. This activity is open and notorious and takes place in an area of the park where zoo animal dung is piled. Militant gays have tried
to prevent some local politicians from cleaning up this mess.
The protesters are people with legitimate concerns about the ongoing campaign by gays to force people to embrace their lifestyle and all it entails, without dissent. We object to laws that give undeserved protection to a group identified only by voluntary and unnatural sex acts.
A Topeka television station conducted a poll two weeks ago and slightly more than 6,000 people called in gages in Gage Park were a problem
Our protests are not about what homosexuals do in the privacy of their homes. They can take that up with God, and in the meantime we'd just as soon they quit yapping about it. They also can explain on the Judgment Day why they only spread a disease that is killing innocent children such as Ryan White.
We were met with counter-protesters at the park. Fine. I mall for robust public debate on this important issue, and we did not behave, which you failed to report.
Like their signs saying, "I hugged your kid today and it felt gooooooood."
Or like when some of them accosted and encircled a few women who joined the protest, chanting threats and jeers.
Or like when a group of homosexuals pushed up against some of the men protesting, saying things like, "I'm going to part your butt."
with video cameras trying to intimidate us.
Or like how they follow us around
In your defense, maybe your reporter/photographer did not see all this. After all, when the television cameras turn on them, like vermin scattering when the light goes on, they straighten up to a large degree. When reporters leave they step up their laptops and displays of rage and hatred.
Their counter-protests are characterized by irrelevant personal attacks and anger over the fact that we dare to utter a word against them. If they could silence us by force of law or arms they would.
The truth is that these gays are bent on forcing everyone to accept them. They will use whatever level of force, and they'll need it, is necessary to accomplish this end.
But we are not going away and we are never going to accept this God-defying lifestyle. Whenever gays put the issue on the public agenda, we will be there. This won't change no matter how much they clamor, how often you deside, or how many frenzied liberals show up from Lawrence or KU.
You can try to pretend that we're irrational zealots and that they are heroes for standing up to us, but anyone who attends the protests—including your representative—knows the exact opposite is the case.
So lighten up on the martyr synrome, guys. And try to print a word or a phrase.
Margareth helps
Topeka graduate student
Margie J. Phelps
Fifth-year senior plan leaves one KU student feeling guilty
As I drove home in May to spend a few days with my parents, I thought about what awaited me.
But no, I knew I had to face the situation, so that I could go on with my life.
The fifth-year senior plan did not go over well at my house.
I knew there would be an initial blowout. That happened in April when I announced my plans for the future (or, as my parents said, lack thereof).
But I never imagined the fallout from that fateful moment would last through the summer, threatening to life the topic of choice for the rest of my life.
My car rumbled down U.S. Highway 50. I thought of my friends, many pseudo-graduating seniors who were down the Hill at that moment.
I thought my self-persecution had been enough. I went through weeks (OK, hours) of calling myself a failure. And then I thought, why?
It's not as though I had these great plans for the future. No job lined up. Surely wasn't moving back home. School quickly became my only option.
I wanted to put the car in reverse and crusse it until the temporary sanctuary was clear. *LAWFEDS*
The words "Your life" were important words that could stop a sentence and drop an eerie calm into the middle of any conversation.
Tiffany Harness Staff Columnist
me or comments on my decisions,
asked me, "So what exactly are you
going to do?"
"With your life," he said in all seriousness.
"In general, Dad?" I asked.
My father, who rarely argues with
And the ball was rolling. The words lingered in the air, floated to my mom's head and were absorbed into her brain. The words "your life" were thrown back, and the sentence and drop an eerie calm in the middle of any conversation.
Other taboo phrases I tried hard to avoid in any context were: "the future." "next year." "after summer."
But it was always there, the fact that I had not graduated in four years.
My mom lightened up and took me shopping. To go, I thought, was the least messy place.
We were already arguing by the
shirts' side, but they blended with
were's.
I was trying on clothes in a dressing room and my mom, as usual, was chatting away with the salesclerk. The conversation turned to me.
"Does your daughter go to college?" the woman asked.
"Yes," my mom answered quietly.
"What year is she?"
There was a long silence. I could hear the tension mounting in the other room.
"What year is she?"
"She's a senior, ummmm, a fifth year senior," I heard her whisper.
For shame, for shame. I could see her thinking as I walked out of the dressing room.
And now she throws in the little fact whenever she gets a chance.
When I called home the other day, she said, "Well, if you had graduated."
If I had graduated, what? I wanted to know. There wouldn't be a heat wave? Our family would be thrust into water. What would happen? World poverty would be conquered?
I am compared with anyone whohas graduated in four years, such as my best friend from high school. She called before I left home.
"Well, how is Becky? She graduated on time. didn't she?" I was asked.
Becky attended Notre Dame. I've seen the price tag. If I had gone there I probably would have graduated in three years. Probably not.
But besides, what is graduating on time? Whose time are we talking? And if on time means in four years, then it certainly isn't on my time.
Let's face it, fifth-year seniorior is quickly becoming the norm. Few of my friends graduated in four years. Several haven't graduated in five.
But now I can look to the future with a new eagerness, ready to take on yet another year of my education, thirst for knowledge and a bridge, a greater understanding of life.
That argument works for me.
Tiffany Harness is a Hutchinson senior majoring in journalism and African-American studies. She is presently an intern at the Dallas Morning News.
Gulf war success won't mean much in a few years
No one talks much about the Mexican-American War these days, but it seemed important at the time. It just ended the political career of Abraham Lincoln. He was a dove, and his Illinois constituents were hawks.
It has been only 51 weeks since Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait, provoking the Persian Gulf War that not long ago seemed like the most important event since the end of World War II. But it is still true to watch the war on television, President Bush compared Saddam to Hitler.
History will tell how, in the longer view, this war will shake down and where it will fit when measured against the United States' other wars
the Revolutionary, the War of 1812, the Mexican, the Civil, the Spanish
Mike Feinsilber
Syndicated columnist
American, World Wars I and II, the Korean, the Vietnam and the Cold.
If you can't wait, and you push historians for instant evaluations of the war, some surprising answers emerge:
■ As a purely military enterprise, the war is losing its gloss.
Warren Kimball, a Rutgers University historian who specializes in war, has called it "a technological turkey shoot."
■ If it had been more painful to the United States, it would have made a more lasting imprint in history.
Yale's Henry Ashby Turner. "We're not going to have long lists of casualties on brass plaques in American towns. So the odds are that the war is going to end in a fashion in national memory, if we get out of there without a lot more damage."
By virtue of the ease with which it was won, the war may come to be seen as an event that subsequently caused the United States to throw its weight around.
"Wounds magnify a war," said
"Since there weren't many losses, it could tend to make the use of military force a bit easier," Kimball said. "I was pleased to see that Bush didn't send the Special Forces into Croatia to keep the peace."
■ The war's most lasting achievement may be to establish the principle, not jelled yet, of intrusive inspection of a
hostile country.
The way in which the United Nations is insisting upon the right to inspect the nooks of Iraq for troublemaking nuclear capacity is something new in American history, a destruction, said John Gaddis, a diplomatic historian at Ohio University.
History, said Gaddis, also will note with astonishment the disproportionality of the casualties: about 200 allied and an estimated 100,000 Iraqi deaths.
As for the war's overall place, Gaddis judges that U.S. history will deem it as having been in the long-term national interest, will conclude it was a mistake and will note that precedent of involuntary international inspection.
Yale's Turner is not so sure.
"As weget more perspective it won't seem so surprising that the greatest military power in the world could defeat a Third World country" with a population about twice that of New Jersey's.
Turner regrets that Bush did not see whether his objectives could have been won without war in view of the precedent that would have set.
History, he said, may judge the war was a missed opportunity to break new ground by attempting through more direct means to move over the same goal without bloodshed.
Kimball ranks the war as historically insignificant — maybe more important than a few of the Indian Grenada and Panama expeditions.
"The popular view of it as a great
American triumph will probably persist for quite a while," Turner said, "but it will come under question down the road. So why do we, since we don't know the end of it yet."
Tomorrow is the new deadline set by the United Nations for Iraq to clean about its nuclear material, facilities or face serious consequences.
"This may have only been the first round," Turner said. "If we march into Baghdad, 50 years from now we might still be up to our vital organs in Iraq but we are not up nearly half a century to get out of Europe after the Second World War."
"That story, of course, worked out happily."
Mike Feinslader is a syndicated columnist with The Associated Press.
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