‘‘They Treated Me as if I Were Dead’’ 129
patients received media attention, and many health care workers opted
not to practice in high incidence HIV areas. But the well-publicized case
of Kimberly Bergalis, allegedly infected by her family dentist, refocused
public attention on the risk infected health care workers could potentially
pose to their patients. The U.S. Senate voted 99 to 0 to require testing of
health professionals engaged in invasive procedures, and mandated ten-
year prison terms and fines for health care workers who knew they were
HIV-positive but failed to inform patients on whom they had performed
such procedures (1). This bill did not become enacted, and the CDC
subsequently advocated that individual states and health care institu-
tions make their own decisions as to what procedures were ‘‘exposure
prone’’ ones from which HIV-positive health care workers should be
barred on a case-by-case basis. Yet HIV-infected health care workers
may continue to face the possible loss of their jobs, and discrimination
(2, 3, 4). Still, it is important to note that only twice have health care
workers ever been documented to have infected patients—once in the
U.S., and once in France (1). Nonetheless, some courts have argued that
patients have the right to know a physician’s HIV status or alcohol history
(5) because it is ‘‘material’’ to a patient’s informed consent decision (i.e.,
posing possible risk, no matter how small). Most patients have said they
would change physicians if their physician had AIDS (5). Some county
medical associations have arranged to have all patients of an HIV-infected
physician HIV-tested after learning of the physician’s positive status.
Patients have sued infected doctors, claiming ‘‘emotional distress’’ from
learning that the physician was positive—even when the patient remained
uninfected.
Physicians with other diseases routinely encountered, or feared, dis-
crimination as well. Such bias varied in directness and intensity. For
instance, at times, doctors with other disorders experienced not clear,
overt discrimination, but ‘‘inflexibility’’ from colleagues who failed to
show empathy, or to acknowledge their colleague’s disease and decreased
function (even if only temporary). As a resident, Deborah experienced a
lack of accommodation, if not discrimination per se, when her schedule
changed.
I was starting radiation therapy every day for six weeks, and had
to juggle time. So I went to the head of my new unit and said, ‘‘I’m
having radiation. I may be late in the mornings.’’ He got very
angry: ‘‘I don’t care what you do, or how you do it. But you have to