WARNING: This article contains a strong bias.

Who is more deserving of their illness: a child of four with leukemia, or a 36 year-old single man with lung cancer? A mother with two children, or a single woman? A heterosexual man with a wife and child, or a homosexual one without either? Someone who is HIV-positive from intravenous drug use, or the one who got it from a blood transfusion?

Did you find your attitude changing from the first set of choices to the last? Maybe that drug addict is more deserving, after all, who can blame the recipient of a blood transfusion? And that 36 year-old guy was probably a smoker anyway! Does it really matter?

For some reason there seem to be diseases that are okay to have, and others that are not. Why is it that some cancers are “not your fault” but others are? That meningitis and shingles are okay to have but being HIV-positive is not? Examples of stigma being attached to certain illnesses exist in every country — one of the most universal is the one attached to HIV/AIDS.

The word “stigma” is an old one originally referring to a physical mark on the bodies of those who were disgraced or condemned. Today, it applies more to a social judgement against a person or group that is considered deviant or shameful. This labelling leads easily into unfair or unjust treatment for the individual, thus turning stigma into discrimination.

A study conducted during 1999 and published in the American Journal of Public Health (March 2002) about people’s attitudes towards, and their knowledge of, HIV/AIDS contained both good and bad news. While the research was done in the United States, we can probably assume similar results among Canadians. In short, they found that fewer people want to quarantine those with AIDS as compared to ten years ago, but there are a growing number who blame people with AIDS for their illness and who do not understand how AIDS is spread.

In 1999, 25% of people believed that people with AIDS (PWA) deserved their illness. Thirty percent would feel uncomfortable if their children attended school with a child who had AIDS; 22% would feel the same if a co-worker had it. And about the quarantine question, there are still 12% of those polled who believe that PWA should be separated from the rest of society. While that translates to about 26 million people in the U.S. (3.7 million in Canada) who believe this, at least the figure is down from the 34% of 1991’s survey.

Knowledge about HIV/AIDS remains rather poor for many. It seems that 41% of people still believe they can get AIDS from a toilet seat; 50% believe getting coughed on could do it; about half fear sharing a drinking glass; and fully one-third believe that they can get AIDS from donating blood — not receiving it, donating it! Just to confirm the facts: none of these has ever been shown to be a source for AIDS infection, but is it any wonder there is stigma attached to HIV/AIDS?

Reducing the stigma and resulting discrimination placed on HIV/AIDS means helping to educate people about how the disease is transmitted, and disconnecting the idea that somehow we deserve certain illnesses. Why would anyone deserve to be sick? To die? And in case you were still wondering, the bias I promised in the opening line is this: no one deserves to be sick.

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Call-out: “Why is it that some cancers are “not your fault” but others are? That meningitis and shingles are okay to have but being HIV-positive is not?”