[Regarding Milton Hershey School gets it wrong on HIV student]
Unless the child in question is also mentally handicapped, he is also 13-years-old. Yes, it could be a risk, but so could having an adult with HIV serving the students.
A child at 13 years of age is, in fact, old enough to be responsible enough to make the responsible decisions that the school is concerned with. The child has, most likely, been educated up, down and sideways about his condition to know what his limitations are. Yes, he is still a child, but this is a child that is fighting a virus within his body that will, eventually, win. However, HIV patients are much more educated now than ever before about what they can and cannot do just to keep ‘themselves’ healthy, let alone others around them.
Yes, this is not an easy call for the school. I do, however, think that the minute we start segregating HIV patients again, we run the risk of repeating past issues back when HIV was considered a “gay” or “drug addict” disease and people claimed they deserved to get it. It seems that if this is allowed, regardless of the school’s good intentions overall, we will be setting back all the progress made since the incidents with Ryan White back in 1985 when he was denied re-admittance to his school- simply because he was a severe hemophiliac that received tainted blood during weekly transfusions that helped keep him ‘alive’ in the first place.
Regardless of how this little boy contracted the virus, though most likely from an infected parent or even as Ryan White did, he is still an innocent child that never asked for this death sentence. And now he is being denied the services of a school that could help him? It’s sad.
