Incorrect Sentiment
In The Times (letter, June 29), Maurine Reedy Ruzek states: “My concern is that most AIDS patients got that way knowing the risks and certainly knowing what causes it.”
The notion is pure balderdash.
Where have these people been during the past several years? It is an established medical fact that the AIDS virus has a lengthy incubation period, one of several years! When the vast majority of AIDS patients past and present got infected, no one knew of any risk. The disease hadn’t even been identified at that point.
No one--and I mean no one--is as highly motivated not to engage in risky behavior these days as we who have seen the horrors of this insidious disease among our own community. We have lost too many friends and family members and can enumerate the intimate details of the suffering they have endured because we have seen it--both the ravages of the illness itself and the suffering brought on by the poverty it inflicts and a social system that doesn’t do much to alleviate it.
TODD VICTOR LEONE
San Francisco
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