DAVID HOCKNEY

R by Arthur Miller

Remarkably, the disease called AIDS is so unwelcome as to move many people to deny its existence, especially in their own bloodstreams. Otherwise intelligent and perceptive folk are still refusing to credit the statistics which show that AIDS is no longer confined to Haitians, homosexuals, drug users through infected needles, and other no-account people.

Of course this denial process is not at all new. I can recall as a young boy how ashamed people were to have to admit that a member of the family had tuberculosis. I suppose this was due to the common idea that the disease came from poverty, with which decent people were in no hurry to be associated if they could help it.

Clearly, AIDS must be contained somehow, and it won’t be, obviously, until everyone feels that he or she is not immune because of social station, culture, or any other seeming barrier to infection. But human denial is probably the toughest barrier to any progress and the way will doubtless be hard.