Battle of Normandy: Will Stigma Prevail?

by Margo Kaplan

Although few facts have been disclosed, it has been reported that someone with contacts to the suburban St. Louis high school was recently diagnosed with HIV and has told health officials that up to 50 of the 1300 students may have been exposed. It is not clear how the exposure may have taken place, and thus what, if any, likelihood of transmission exists. However, the high school took the laudable response of providing HIV counseling, as well as confidential, voluntary testing to its students to ensure that every student understands his or her HIV risk and every student has an opportunity be tested. Meanwhile, the school is working with national AIDS organizations to ensure an appropriate, fact-based response.

 

Unfortunately, the response in the surrounding community has demonstrated how hysteria can fill the void left by the failure to ensure, more than 25 years after the emergence of AIDS, that both children and their parents have a basic understanding of how HIV is—and is not—transmitted. A competing school’s football team initially refused to play Normandy’s team. At least one student reported being dumped by her boyfriend from a neighboring district upon learning the news. And parents in Normandy are discussing leaving the school district.

 

This response ignores the fact that HIV is not spread by association and rumor—it is transmitted by unprotected sex or sharing needles, not by dating, sharing bathrooms and cafeterias, or the contact and injuries involved in football. The risk of transmission through a football player’s exposure to another player’s blood is so low as to be virtually non-existent—indeed, it has never happened, and the likelihood is less than 1 in 85 million. This can be compared with the 1 in 5 million chance of death as a result of injury during a high school football game, the 1 in 150,000 chance of catastrophic injury, or the 1 in 280,000 chance of being struck by lightning. Common sense hygiene and safety precautions, such as avoiding handling blood with bare hands, are taken to further minimize the risk. These precautions must be followed regardless of what school the players are from because HIV risk is not determined by the high school a student attends. In sum, stigmatizing the students of Normandy High School does nothing to reduce anyone’s risk of contracting HIV.

 

In fact, stigmatizing these students puts teenagers at greater risk by teaching them that avoiding HIV is not a matter of avoiding risky activities but rather avoiding “risky people.” It perpetuates myths about how HIV is transmitted and teaches that people with HIV are vectors for disease. It encourages students to believe that they can avoid HIV by simply avoiding the “wrong people.” Moreover, it stigmatizes those who engage in responsible behavior such as HIV testing and treatment, and discourages students from acting responsibly if they have been exposed to HIV.

 

The recent experience of the Normandy community should serve as a wake up call about our responsibility to inform students, and their parents, about how HIV is and is not spread. We must teach our children that it is their responsibility to protect themselves from HIV by avoiding risky activities and—if they have engaged in activities such as sex without a condom or needle-sharing—getting tested. And we must make it clear to our children, through our conduct and our advocacy, that the result of that test will never alter their right to be treated with respect and dignity.