But what can we do? Draconian solutions run against the American character. How many Americans, with their tolerant attitude toward civil rights, would go along with compulsory AIDS testing? For everyone. With the government then enforcing policies that would ensure that the infected do not pass on the virus to the uninfected. I leave it to each individual's own imagination how that policy would be carried out and with what impact on our lives, on our society, on future generations, on civilization as we know it. As Dr. Seale has written: "The actions required by government are comparable to those taken in waging a war." In Africa, stern measures to isolate those with AIDS are beginning, although much too late to save the population.

And in India, anyone found to have AIDS is immediately imprisoned and never released. Period. And yet: The most horrifying thought of all is that if we don't demand from our institutions an immediate and honest response to this epidemic, that is exactly the kind of future that awaits us. If the Olympians are given free rein to spread AIDS under cover of "natural disaster" and complete protection of all civil rights of the infected until the gravity of this crisis becomes apparent to all Americans, then that sort of  (68 of ) draconian solution is what the mobs in the streets will be demanding. A plague panic will catapult us into police state solutions which, for the Olympians, will be a lovely fringe benefit of the AIDS epidemic, since they'll be controlling the police beyond any nightmare we've ever imagined in America. Remember what Brzezinski told us more than 20 years ago: It's about control. In all its forms. If the Olympians succeed at keeping the American public asleep until their very survival as a nation requires a police state, then the Olympians will happily step in to run it. And be perceived as heroes for saving the day. Out of this nightmare comes the unthinkable in the early 21st Century: A dictatorship worthy of a Hitler running America. And with technology (and biotechnology) in its arsenal that is beyond Hitler's wildest dreams.

We must take action. But what? I don't have an agenda of policies. I'm not a politician. The current debate swirling in Congress over the future of American health care is enough to persuade me that no one person has all the answers. What I do know is this: The right questions must be asked and honest answers demanded. Any solution to the AIDS epidemic must begin with the public learning the truth about two questions: What caused it? How does it spread? We are already in a crisis among scientists, researchers and virologists working on AIDS. Almost every laboratory in America is polarized between those who want full disclosure and those who do not. A growing body of researchers, scientists, doctors and virologists abhore the politicization of the AIDS plague and are demanding that the truth prevail. But this group is not strong enough to make their voices heard in the media.

They are ignored. And when they do make their views known, they are threatened with loss of jobs and other reprisals. That must change. Public pressure must convince politicians that they have no choice but to seek the truth about AIDS. Even the Olympians respond to public outrage. Witness Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal. It wouldn't take very many Chemical and Bacteriological Warfare scientists testifying before Congress under forced grants of immunity; talk or go to prison before even the Olympians would be running for cover. When they see the public and the press turning against them, they'll become more cautious, perhaps even put some of their grand ambitions "on hold." That alone would save lives. Prosecution of those who created this monstrous plague could permanently remove them from society before they do more harm.  (69 of ) And it would put their spiritual heirs on notice that America will no longer tolerate this kind of criminality.

The revelation of some of America's darkest secrets would have a cleansing effect on the political climate and allow a new debate about how best to cope with the AIDS crisis. Until now, the suffering of those with AIDS has been stressed while the suffering of those who will someday get AIDS has been ignored. We have been lulled into treating AIDS as a civil rights issue, rather than a public health issue. The rights of those already infected have taken precedent over the rights of the uninfected. God knows I would not want to see more harm come to anyone with AIDS.

They deserve the best medical care available, the most compassionate treatment and all human understanding that this disease is not their fault. But those who are stricken do not have the right to infect others. Epidemic control measures must be invoked in industries health care workers, food service workers, for instance critical to the public health. Would we take our children to see a doctor who was visibly infected showing large pustules on his face and arms with smallpox? If not, then why should we take our children to see doctors and dentists who draw blood while infected with AIDS? If our local public health board would crack down on a restaurant that allowed waiters and dishwashers to work with measles, then why would we not demand the same level of confidence that food servers are not infected with AIDS? This is not prejudice against people with AIDS. This is a straightforward matter of public health. If it takes government insurance, along the lines of social security, to provide an income for those displaced from their work, that is preferable and ultimately less costly, almost no matter how expensive. Blood banks must have a strict screening process for all donors, a process that is one hundred percent fullproof, regardless of the cost.

But the Council of Community Blood Centers and The American Association of Blood Banks vigorously oppose any mandatory program for screening donors. And the government has taken no action to put severe clamps on who can donate blood and who can't. What is urgently needed is a law requiring a sworn affidavit regarding sexual behavior of all volunteer donors, with severe penalties for those who lie. But it is not only gays who are donating contaminated blood. There are hundreds of thousands of heterosexual Americans who have no idea and no reason to believe, given the misinformation about how the disease is spread that they are HIV-positive. When they walk through the doors of a blood bank, they are a menace and they don't even know it. They are unwittingly allowed to spread the epidemic. We are told that these people must not be discriminated against. The rights of the potential donor are protected; but not the rights of the innocent recipient. No attempt has been made to introduce fullproof screening methods for all blood donors. The debate has centered on civil liberties the right of privacy rather than public health. But nobody has a right to donate blood without careful screening to assure that they are not infected with HIV. This must be perceived as a matter of epidemic control, rather than civil liberties, or the death toll on  (70 of ) innocent people will rise to levels beyond what anybody would now believe. This is not only a life-anddeath matter for individuals. This is a life-and-death matter for society.