The little girl grabs onto my hand and shrieks as we plummet down Steel Force - the biggest roller coaster at Dorney Park. No one would guess that she is HIV-positive.
The common stigmas associated with HIV/AIDS are that only drug addicts, prostitutes and promiscuous gay men contract the disease and, well, it's their own fault. Either that, or they live in Africa where distance makes it possible not to think about the problem.
But here, dozens of healthy-looking kids run around on water slides and roller coasters-no one would guess this was anything other than a school trip.
I remember when I first started working at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's office for children who are perinatally infected with HIV. It was the summer after my freshman year of college-these children, all of whom contracted HIV from their mothers during birth, made me sad, but still, most were low-income black families, and the disease remained distant.
One afternoon, entering data in the computer, I stopped short - the mother of a new patient was a girl I knew.
I sat stunned, unable to grasp that I knew someone who was HIV-positive. In that moment, I learned that HIV can affect anyone. I glanced at the screen again and breathed a sigh of relief upon learning that her baby does not have HIV.
In 1994 it was shown that if HIV positive pregnant women took a new drug, ZDV, they would drastically reduce the chance of their child acquiring HIV. To compliment the antiretroviral medication mothers should also have a C-section birth, and refrain from breast-feeding. The virus does not live in the amniotic sac, transmission occurs in the birth canal, or through breast-feeding.
As of today, perinatal treatment reduces the chance of transmission from 50 percent to less than 2 percent. In fact, in 2004 only 145 babies were perinatally infected with HIV in the United States.
The problem is, most people don't know this.
I recently started a tutoring program for the kids from 5th through 12th grade seen at CHOP, and I was shocked that Penn students were concerned about contracting HIV from contact with the kids.
It is often said that teenagers and college kids think that they are invincible, and when it comes to HIV, it's true. When the disease first surfaced there was an increase in protected sex - now, young people no longer feel the need to use protection. The common thought: "No one I'd sleep with would have AIDS."
The truth: Heterosexual transmission of HIV has soared from 3 percent in 1985 to 35 percent in 2004, and women are more likely to contract the disease during intercourse.
Furthermore, studies suggest that more women contract HIV from a "monogamous" partner than through casual sex. While it might soothe some students' fears that they need not worry about everyday contact from cuts and saliva, we should all be alarmed by the real threat: Engaging in unprotected sex puts everyone at risk for HIV, even if it only happens once, and even if it's just with one person.
In the summer of 2006, Vogue published an article written by a white, upper-middle-class, HIV-positive woman. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. She summered in the Hamptons.
This woman contracted HIV while in a monogamous relationship with a man she loved and with whom she used condoms except for twice. In an interview at the International AIDS Conference she said about her article, "I think they wanted to show that people who read Vogue can get HIV."
Nowhere should this statement resonate more than with college-aged females. When I read the article, I shuddered to think that the vast majority of sexually active college students have had the same experience.
In a college culture where the birth control pill is an acceptable reason to forgo condoms, how often do we stop to think about the risk of HIV? How many of us have requested test results before becoming intimate with our partner? How many of us have gotten tested ourselves? It is staggering that we know the risk, yet still engage in our relationships as if it does not exist.
The bottom line is that the middle and upper classes need to be aware of the facts. Sexual education needs to instill in kids that HIV doesn't play favorites; it doesn't care what your race, sexual preference, or socioeconomic background is, HIV/AIDS is a real threat that can affect anyone, anywhere.
Guest columnist Megan Lewis is a College senior from Bala Cynwyd, Pa. She can be reached at lewismeg@sas.upenn.edu.
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