And the Band Played On

HIV/AIDS began to affect our population in the 1980s and has been detrimental to our society. This illness has killed millions around the world and continues to infect individuals everyday. In a class on Community Health I watched a movie named "And the Band Played On". This movie discussed the HIV/AIDS epidemic from the beginning and gave a closer perspective to how HIV/AIDS affect individuals from a researcher, family member, infected person, and society viewpoint. One of the main issues in the movie discussed how many homosexual men were contracting the disease in bath houses. These were spa-like businesses that allowed men to have sexual intercourse.

There was one character in the movie who was a French-Canadian flight attendant. He was suspected of infecting several men with HIV. Since this was the beginning of the epidemic he was in denial that he was infected. Researchers from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) began to investigate him. They asked him how many sex partners did he have and he admitted to sleeping with thousands of men around the world. After conducting more research on him they found that there were at least 40 men in the United States who were infected with HIV as a result of this flight attendant.

Although this was person was not the main subject of the movie, his role was most devastating to me. It difficult to see him because there are characters like him in real life. These individuals are infecting others without any remorse. This behavior is unethical and those who knowingly infect others lack ethical moral, values, and principles. Nonmaleficence is the ethical principle that is especially disregarded because it discusses causing no harm. Infecting others with HIV is causing a lot of harm to the person who is infected. Those who participate in this behavior also violate the values of compassion, respect and honesty.

It is important that more people are educated on the topic of HIV/AIDS so that we can prevent incidents like these. Ethics can play an important role in certain individuals who contract HIV. Hopefully one day our society will be able to get some control over this epidemic. Until then preventing people from contracting the disease and helping those who are infected is imperative.