AIDS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION
Dr. Donald Miller is a practising anaesthetist in Cape Town. He invites
discussion on the letters below, and would like to link up with evangelicals in
the medical profession who are prepared to take a stand on these issues.
1. THE CHALLENGE OF AIDS TO THE MEDICAL
PROFESSION.
To the Editor:
The spreading AIDS epidemic is a precise illustration of the
inadequate response of the medical profession to this preventable disease. As
leaders in healthcare we have been a disgrace. The rules of treatment have been
ignored in treating the symptoms and not the cause and in hesitating to make
this most notifiable of diseases notifiable. The epidemic is spreading not
because of "unprotected sex” or contaminated blood, but because the
behaviour of mankind is out of step with the image in which he is created.
The inadequacy of the profession's response in addressing the
issue is entirely due to the time prevailing attitude amongst its policy
makers, which is determined by a poverty-stricken humanistic philosophy with
its pseudo-morality.
In contrast, the Biblical teaching on sexuality provides the means
by which AIDS can be eliminated. The solution to the problem is known, and yet
I have not yet encountered one article in a medical journal that mentions it. A
faithful, monogamous relationship, and sexual intercourse only within marriage,
is the only solution and the only safe sex. In the Bible, almost without
exception, sex outside of marriage was punishable by death. It is as if man's
persistent refusal to heed God's order for healthy, satisfying, family life has
made it necessary for AIDS to bring man to his senses. AIDS is not a
punishment. It is simply there to illustrate to us that his our way results in
death, the fruit of humanistic philosophy.
Can we afford to call stating the truth as a first step to
changing man's behaviour impractical idealism? Does sex education in this
country promote anything to do with the restoration of God's order for sexual
relationships (sex is in fact the smallest part of this huge and important
subject) or is it just symptomatic in its treatment, promoting pre-marital or
extra-marital sex indirectly, through its focus on "safer sex", and
the prevention of pregnancy? You can hardly call playing Russian roulette
practical.
NO progress in halting the AIDS epidemic is likely until we are
prepared to recognise the need for the restoration of God's order for sexual
relationships, as laid down in the Bible. AIDS would be wiped off the face of
the earth if we all followed the rules. If the truth is never said, it leaves
us with no real hope, only delusions.
2. WHY AIDS IS NOT A NOTIFIABLE DISEASE.
To the Editor.
Of all the diseases which should qualify as a notifiable disease,
AIDS should top the list. YET, is it not a most extraordinary phenomenon, that
this disease has received such exceptional treatment? It is because this
disease uniquely reveals man’s fallen nature. Homosexuals, whose survival was
threatened when AIDS became known (about the same time that the homosexuals
went public) in California in about 1980, have been very successful in their
campaign to sway opinion from the beginning and securing as many as possible of
their number in high positions for that purpose.
With humanism as its foundational philosophy, the medical
fraternity, worldwide, has been completely vulnerable to such a pressure group.
Without a basis for being able to say what is right and wrong, the profession
is without the required discernment. It cannot see the irrational double
standards employed as arguments to support issues such as confidentiality,
consent, etc. For instance, potential AIDS patients, they say, are supposed to
be treated like any other patient, except, unlike any other patient, consent to
investigate them for the HIV virus must be sought. Another argument that is
used to support the idea of confidentiality is that many AIDS sufferers are
innocent. The vast majority, who are guilty, hide behind the fact. Some are
innocent, with nothing to be ashamed of, making the innocent even more
vulnerable to this rapidly spreading disease. To add to their twisted logic,
they argue that if you make it notifiable, it will drive the disease
underground. That is in fact the present status of the disease, and the urgent
reason that it be made notifiable.
This pressure group has obtained much space in journals and the
media, where we can hear these opinion makers at work. You only ever hear them
talk about the right of the HIV positive individual and never are the rights of
the community mentioned. Conversely, you only ever hear about the
responsibility of the community to provide for the sufferer: never are the
responsibilities of the individual mentioned. This is typical of humanistic
thought and the state of rebellion of humankind against the God who is there.
He is there and he is not silent. AIDS is a very loud shout to humankind to
turn to the Bible that provides the only solution to the problem.
Donald Miller
4 Weltevreden
Pinelands
7405 South Africa
Many to Many Issue 3 February 1993