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Not So Gallant After All |
"Back in the 80's, people with AIDS were frequently either vilified or sanctified. Those who sanctified them treated them as angelic innocents who could do no wrong, leading to a form of "AIDS exceptionalism" that in extreme cases allowed relatively able-bodied people get monthly disability checks, daily home-delivered gourmet meals, and massage and aroma therapy, often at government expense, while an enormous proportion of our society continues to scrape by without adequate food or basic medical care." So, "able-bodied people" with AIDS should instead have been kicked into the gutter, perhaps? Stress-relieving massage is an option only for rich folks? And "an enormous proportion of our society" has no medical care, because Dr. Gallant and his cohorts have caved in to the demands of HMOs, and only provide the minimum of care the bean-counters will pay for? Sorry, but BuckcuB senses the issue here lies not with blameless AIDS sufferers, but with a cold-blooded doctor who ought to be in some other line of work--or at least some other specialty. Like preparing the lethal injections used to execute condemned prisoners, for instance.
Like you, BuckcuB just has to wonder--what the hell was Dr. Gallant thinking when he wrote that merciless response to a question? Rather telling, too, that Gallant's comment segues almost-unconsciously from the past to the present -- he goes from "Back in the 80's" to "...proportion of our society continues to scrape by..." It's pretty plain he feels PWA's are still being "exceptionalized." The guy is supposed to be one of Johns Hopkins' ultimate AIDS docs. He runs the hospitals' AIDS website, represents the institution to the online AIDS community-at-large, and is responsible for posting responses to questions about AIDS treatment on a daily basis. Well--BuckcuB happens to think Joel Gallant is a poor excuse for a caregiver and an even poorer excuse as the representative of a major medical institution, if his comments above are an example of how he truly feels. The most charitable estimation of Dr. Gallant's statement would be that the man is simply too much of a clinician to understand and appreciate emotionally, as a caregiver, the daily horrors faced by many people with AIDS. That Joel Gallant just doesn't "get it." And that would be bad enough -- but thousands of folks can face this attitude from doctors who take their cue from the opinions expressed by their colleagues, especially at well-respected websites like Johns Hopkins'. Dr. Gallant seems to think PWA's are all sitting around in the lap of luxury, being "exceptionalized" with lavish disability checks from the government, luxurious massages, spritzes of aromatherapeutic myrrh and frankincense, and pate' de foie gras delivered daily to the door. Perhaps BuckcuB should introduce the frosty-hearted physician to friend Jay, who lives in a gritty Section-8 lodging where gunshots crackle a deadly staccato every night outside the grim building, while he sits in the dark to try and stretch the pathetic $400 monthly Social Security Disability check he gets. Or maybe Gallant would like to meet Phil, who spends his days choking down dozens of pills and running twice an hour to the toilet, with either explosive diarrhea from the protease-inhibitors, or puking from the nausea induced by other anti-HIV medications. Oops, my mistake -- Phil's probably just reacting to a too-extravagant surfeit of filet mignon Bordelaise and Chateau Margaux conveyed personally to his door by bleeding-heart liberals, dontcha think Dr. Gallant? What BuckcuB truly fears is that Gallant is merely the tip of a medical-backlash iceberg. The once-powerful "doctor's lobby" has been crushed into mewling submission by almighty HMOs. No more scandalously-costly office-call bills to provide a prodigious income supplying Mercedes-Benzes to tool around in, and Russian sables to drape on the wife for sojourns to the country club. No more Wedensday afternoons of golf and cocktails afterward at the "nineteenth hole," freed from patient care. Doctors are, by and large, strictly contract employees these days, and their employers drive them hard. So one wonders how much of Gallant's disagreeable attitude about "AIDS exceptionalism" is simple spite -- begrudging those suffering with AIDS the supposedly-sumptuous perquisites doctors no longer enjoy. Spiteful people do not make good caregivers, BuckcuB need hardly point out. It seems to be a short step, dear reader, from practicing medicine to passing moral judgment. Dr. Gallant plainly disagrees with the characterization of PWAs as "angelic innocents." Of what, then, are they guilty -- especially those who contracted the disease in the Eighties before much was known about the virus and safe-sex practices? Even today with all we know about HIV and practicing safe sex, accidents happen. Condoms break. There's a tiny cut in your mouth you didn't know about. Semen splashes, during a particularly boisterous bit of slap-and-tickle, where it oughtn't to have splashed. BuckcuB is unaware of any folks actively trying to contract AIDS, urban legends notwithstanding. AIDS is a chronic, debilitating, life-threatening disease, as a doctor should know better than anyone. Are we to say, then, that PWAs should be treated the same as someone with a head cold? That seems to be what Gallant implies. BuckcuB can only hope that his bedside manner isn't as chilly as his online commentary, or his patients will expire from hypothermia long before AIDS gets them! There's no reason PWAs should have to put up with this kind of attitude, and the real danger to their health it poses – no one should have a medical caregiver with the view that ominous circumstances don't justify "exceptional" treatment. And BuckcuB thinks Johns Hopkins ought to get itself a new front-man for their AIDS website; Dr. Joel Gallant could put his talent to better use singing "If I Only Had A Heart" in hospices. |
Dr. Joel Gallant 
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