Why are people discriminated against for being HIV and AIDS positive? One girl in AIDS INC said “IF you want me to meet people with AIDS, you better give me a rubber suit” (Page 115) Now this just shows me how uneducated the people who discriminate are. They do not realize that AIDS and HIV cannot be transferred without blood or sexual fluids getting inside the body. Handshaking someone who has AIDS or even being in the same room will not somehow magically get you infected with the disease. I think one of the reasons people think it can be caught by being near an infected person is when hospital staff and such wear masks around the patient. The masks are not there to protect the doctors. When you are infected with AIDS, it affects your immune system which causes it to be weak, and if the staff or vistors give a germ or pathogen to the infected it can increase the fate of mortality.
Another reason HIV and AIDS are so heavily discriminated is that in the 80s and 90s it was a common myth that only gay people could contract this illness, which was obviously false because Magic Johnson had gotten it in the 90s and he is not gay. Of course people just automatically assumed he had sex with a man, but in reality being a “player” and sleeping with multiple women caused it. The homophobia in the world had taken AIDS as another reason to hate gays and say that they were not good for humanity and that they contain such a horrible virus, when in reality it is a disease anyone can get after being exposed so being gay has nothing to do with it. Thus with this connection AIDS and HIV got a negative “scare factor” and a reason to discriminate those who are infected.
