Coming Up!
The Lesbian/Gay Comunity Calendar of Events and Newspaper for the Bay Area
Volume 6 No. 10
July 1985

DON"T TAKE THE TEST
By Dr. Tom Waddell

I walked towards my office and saw a young man standing near the registration desk. He was obviously alarmed.

He started towards me. I was about to tell him he had to register to be seen when he handed me a small yellow card which he had been given at a blood donor station.

The handwriting on the card said, "You have HTLV-3 antibodies, please see a doctor."

He wanted to blow his brains out.

Most people can only think of the lethal disease known as AIDS as the "gay" disease. And why not? In San Francisco about 95% of the cases exist in gay men. Historians, psychologists, sociologists and perhaps even novelists are going to have a field day when they look back at the gay community and begin to assess the ravages and the changes that affected one of the most fertile and interesting subcultures the world has ever seen. The titles of their works just might include the word "evanescent" in describing our meteoric successes and failures.
Our history as an organized "group" has thus far been brief by any standards. The cultures of the persecuted Anabaptists of the 16th century and the Shakers of the 18th century, though primarily religious, had many parallels to our community. Each had a period in the limelight of history that exceeded our own. Critical events, both internal and external to those groups, accelerated their demise. Now they exist only as historical social experiments that failed.
Our gay subculture has flourished over the past 20 years in a way that may be characterized as a kind of sexual juggernaut. In a very real sense, we became a single issue movement that created single issue communities in urban centers throughout the world. Our common link was our mutual sense of oppression over our sexual preferences.
The overwhelming message of our movement has been singular... Gay Rights. The movement never made a uniform statement embracing equal rights for women, an end to racial and ethnic prejudices, or inclusion of the elderly. We are perceived as a community precisely in the way AIDS is perceived - affecting young, white, gay males.
This singularity has made us vulnerable and may prove to be our undoing, because there now exists a tool which can be used both from within and from without to pry us into factions, irreversably. A house permanently divided.
The tool is HTVL-3 testing.
As many men leap to be tested, is anyone asking, "Who is pushing for this test," and perhaps more important, "Why?"

The test is now available on a voluntary basis, or if you donate blood the test may be used for screening. There are a surprising number of gay men who are rushing to be tested, and I feel that they, or we, as a community have not had much of a dialogue on the consequences of testing. Will it become fashionable to be negative, or worse, will it be fashionable to "say" you are negative, true or not? Or is the government pressing for all this testing knowing that sooner or later they will have to make a move on the carriers of AIDS?
My first question which leads to an objection to the test is: In what way does the test serve the individual OR the community? There is no useful information provided by the test, but there are disadvantages. Whether positive or negative there is nothing one can do with the results. Perhaps at some future date, knowing you have a positive test will lead to some therapy, but as of today there is nothing to be changed. Some say, "I just want to know" and I always ask "why?" The answers are astounding.
"I'll feel safer if I'm negative."
But what if the person is positive! And what difference does it make? Does it mean the person will be more careful if he's positive? If that's the case, then the converse of the question is "Does that mean you would be less careful if you were negative?"
So many people say they will worry less. I doubt it. If you are negative, how do you know you won't convert a week later... a month later... or a year later? It's a false sense of securi! ty. And what would you do differently except perhaps, be less careful?
If you are positive, and you don't become an instant psychological casualty, won't you constantly worry that you might be one of those who have a false positive? Or will you be a basket case waiting for the other shoe to fall?

Another point that is so worrisome is the "guarantee" of anonymity. All the promises in the world are useless. "Guaranteed" anonymity is a myth; it does not exist. The Department of Public Health has powers to "protect the public" that it has not even begun to exercise. Call me paranoid, but our community is the target when they're talking quarantine.
Still another consideration is the internal reaction of the community to the test. Let's assume that a significant percentage (20 - 50%) of those tested will be positive. Let us then consider what happens with THAT information. There is a well-documented victimization of persons with AIDS, not only in the general public, but within our community. Would it be any different for carriers? Paul Castro tried to bring the point home when he said, "I am a person, not a disease." But we are conditioned to avoid diseased persons. We like to think we are liberated in many ways, yet there is a gap between our intellectual response to di! sease and our emotional behavior.
So suddenly there will be thousands of men who are "carriers" and we will have two gay male populations: those with and those without. No matter how brave or broadminded we are, I hate to think of the social implications of that dilemma. One man I asked said, "If I'm negative, I'll look for another negative"... Oh, the seeds of prejudice and lies.
Testing for HTLV-3 is dangerous. It does not serve us and it will not serve us until something can be done with the results. There was only one answer to the problem in 1980 and there is only one answer in 1985. That is to interrupt the transmission of the virus.
Safe sex is the answer.

Please consider carefully all the legal, social and emotional consequences of being tested for HTLV-3. They are all quite serious and deserving of careful scrutiny. Are you prepared for the result and what your life will be like following the test? It doesn't matter what your risk level is, or what the result is... everyone worries.
By the way, the young man who came to our clinic had moved to San Francisco just a few months ago from the East Coast. I asked him into my office and then spent 45 minutes convincing him the test did not mean he had AIDS, nor did it mean he was going to die soon.
I made an appointment for him on Ward 86 at SF General Hospital for further support. He left shaken, but no longer suicidal.
I could say nothing to him to make him forget the results of the test.