I disagree with your support of the Cook County Board`s suspension of a Cook County Hospital doctor with AIDS. Instead of allaying public fears, such a suspension only confirms, in the minds of the uninformed, that there was indeed reason to fear being infected with AIDS; this in turn reinforces the misconception that AIDS may be contracted through casual contact.
Only through sexual intercourse, transfusions with contaminated blood or contaminated needles can a person be infected with AIDS.
I think it is significant that the hospital`s own executive medical staff, which includes experts in infectious diseases, voted unanimously to reinstate the doctor with full clinical privileges. The Cook County Board had no such professional expertise on which to base its decision. In order to combat public hysteria over AIDS, officials and others in the public eye must not succomb to such unreasoning hysteria themselves.
