WILD SURMISE

#2

AN ALMOST ANONYMOUS INFORMAL NOTE

AVOIDABLE VIOLENCE

One of the pleasant things in this age is that most problems have some limiting condition. A computer error, although incomprehensible to most of us, seldom causes much trouble, has no permanent implications. Automotive accidents usually befall strangers. World War III may never happen at all. Rapid population growth will not cause world famine for some years yet. A stubbed toe only hurts so much. Yet there is one problem that is devastating, involves us all and is happening right now. I refer to the LAV viral epidemic. Barring a miracle, the virus will seal the doom of essentially everybody in the nation within four years. The encouraging thing is that miracles are available,if you want them badly enough. The trick is knowing what to want.

LAV was discovered by French workers; the name is an acronym for "lymphadenopathy virus'¹ or ¹¹virus that makes lymph glands swell." It is the agent that causes AIDS; that, in case you hadn't heard, is an acronym for "acquired immune deficiency syndrome" or "going from having a perfectly good immune system to having none."

Shortly after the French discovered the virus, Americans discovered the same virus and named it HTLV III virus. You are more likely to hear it called that, but I will call it LAV until someone comes up with a good reason to change.

LAV is a "retrovirus." A virus is a small organism consisting of a single strand of DNA, the stuff of heredity, and a protein coat. Ordinarily a virus replicates by invading a cell and using the viral DNA to direct the mechanism of the host cell to make more viral DNA and protein. If the host cell is a one cell organism, like a bacterium, the host eventually disintegrates, releasing myriads of new virus. If the host cell is in human tissue, there are four things that limit the damage. First, not every virus is able to invade every type of cell. Second, the body is able to put out a substance called "interferon," which protects cells from being invaded. Interferon is released when a tissue detects a viral infection; for this reason, one does not generally get two different viral infections at the same time. Third, virus is destroyed by the body's immune system - largely lymphocytes. Fourth, at least for a time, the invaded cell does not fall apart, but releases new viruses by budding them from its surface.

When you look at a lymphocyte under a microscope, it seems rather dull. It's just a dark round nucleus with a very thin rim of pale cytoplasm. A whole field of them is downright boring. Properly irritated, however, lymphocyte begin to change shape, throwing out long cell processes, touching and engulfing things at a great rate. There is more action in a field of busy lymphocyte than anywhere else you are apt to look with a microscope. Nor are all lymphocyte alike in function.

B lymphocytes mature in the bone marrow and primarily put out antibodies, proteins that are able to combine with foreign material that turns up in the body. There is more than one class of B lymphocyte; indeed, some are specialized down to the point that they are only able to produce an antibody that binds to a single site on a single foreign protein. Once antibody has attached to a foreign substance (an antigen), other body defenses are called into play.

T lymphocytes mature in the thymus. (HTLV means "human tlymphocyte virus.¹¹) Classes of t-lymphocytes include cells that actually break apart other cells, cells that stimulate the body's defenses (in George Bernard Shaw's words, they "stimulate the phagocytes"(phagocytes are cells that act like amoebae and engulf things)), cells that turn off the defenses, and "helper" cells that are needed for the other lymphocytes to function.

There is a whole zoo of other things in the body's defenses; polymorphonuclear neutrophilic leucocytes, eosinophiles, mast cells, histiocytes, antigen presenter cells, monocytes, natural killer cells and others. And there is a chemical defense system called complement.

Enter, alas, the LAV virus. Once given access to the blood stream, the virus drifts about invading what host cells it can. Its first bit of nastiness is that among its target cells is the T-helper lymphocyte, crucial to the lymphocyte defense system. Its second bit of nastiness is that once in the cell, the LAV virus is not content to direct the cell's machinery to make more virus. LAV is a retro-virus; it manages to get its foreign DNA incorporated into the host's own DNA. It is as if the enemy has not only had saboteurs infiltrate the army headquarters, but has got them promoted to the general staff. Closed within nucleus, the viral DNA is not vulnerable to recognition by known process that does not kill the cell.

A third bit of nastiness is that this virus is able to replicate itself with unprecedented speed. Nobody has ever seen a virus that is able to make other viruses at anything like the same rate. More helper cells get infected.

Under certain circumstances, and no one is yet sure just what circumstances, the helper cells die out, essentially completely. It may need only the passage of time. It may require some added insult. But when all the helper cells are gone, AIDS ensues. A victim of AIDS basically loses his lymphatic defense system, becoming vulnerable to a large number of infections that the healthy body usually is not prone to. There is often damage to the brain by direct effect of the virus or indirectly by infection. The condition, given the present state of medical knowledge, is lethal within a few months either by uncontrollable infection or the appearance of one of certain kinds of tumor. There is another condition called "AIDS related complex," that is short of full blown AIDS. The outlook for this is not so bleak as the outlook for AIDS, but it is not known whether the victim will eventually develop AIDS.

There are not many points in the process where a person can be protected. Being a retrovirus, LAV seems unseatable once it has reached the lymphocytes. One would expect that a vaccine could be developed that would prevent the disease. With enough of the right antibody in the blood, the virus might never find a lymphocyte. But the LAV has yet another nasty trick. It mutates at a very rapid rate.

Any cell can have a change in its genetic makeup. The rate at which mutations occur may depend to a certain extent on chemicals in the environment and radiation level. But LAV mutates at an exceedingly fast rate, perhaps because of its exceedingly fast reproduction rate. Anyway, one person's LAV virus may be so unlike another's that there are very few antigenic sites in common between the few. No vaccine will work against both of them. That pushes the line of defense back to the obvious one.

The virus must never be allowed into the blood stream.

Nothing else now conceived of has a reasonable chance of working.

There is a concept once highly thought of, but largely forgotten now, called "balance of nature." In any natural system, a single insult, say a fire or a flood, will produce a reaction that tends to restore matters. The grass is poor, so rabbits starve, so foxes starve, so the grass survives and the rabbits survive. We are so accustomed to controlling nature that we now rather dismiss the notion that she has or ever had a balance.

But our survival has often depended on "balance." A truly deadly epidemic would in theory kill all the hosts in the community before it could spread to another community. More often, as an epidemic disease spreads through a population, there is a certain mutation rate. Strains of the disease that are milder appear, and it is these strains that spread faster because the hosts are stronger and get around more. After the disease has been around for a long time, most potential hosts have been exposed to a mild version, have survived and are immune before they are exposed to a more deadly strain.

LAV doesn't work that way. First, there is no evidence that anyone can be immune to LAV. In the second place, the virus already has a long latent period. It seems to be years between the exposure to the LAV virus and the first hint of a problem. During all this time, the host behaves in what (for him) is a normal fashion. Thus there is no selective pressure on the virus to develop milder strains. On the contrary, the pressure on the virus is to develop easier means of access. If there are two strains in the community, the more infectious one is the one more likely to survive the only known defense: keeping the virus out.

While we are dealing with natural selection, there is an irony that seems to have gone unnoticed. If you divide this country (crudely and falsely, but let me finish) into two groups, you might characterize the groups as follows: First group. Sophisticated, socially mobile, tending to travel, agnostic, believers in evolution, tending to be permissive toward promiscuity. Second group. Humble, socially tight knit, tending to stay at home, fundamentalist, non-believers in evolution, tending to be critical of promiscuity. Now I'm not sure such groups exist, but if they were to, which would be more likely to survive an epidemic of LAV? The socially more tight knit community will have a selective advantage. Logically, if evolution applies to people, then the belief in it will die out. Only if evolution doesn't happen will there be anybody left who believes in it.

Applying evolution to the virus itself spells more trouble. We live in a civilization that experiences regular viral epidemics. Suppose this rapidly mutating virus were to stumble on the ability to spread the way the common cold spreads? What would be our protection?

If the virus continues to spread at the same rate as it has before, by the time you read this, there will be over one million Americans carrying the virus. The rate at which the virus has been spreading in our country is about a three fold increase each year or going up by a factor of ten each two years. At that rate, the whole country would be infected by the end of the decade. (And the decade is more than half over.)

Indeed, up until now, the virus has been mostly confined to male homosexuals, drug addicts, and hemophiliacs. It was once said that Haitians were also a high risk group. If the disease has hitherto been confined to a small group (a million a small group?), one might hope it would stay confined. But it does not seem plausible that the group or groups named are a homogeneous population. Surely some drug users are more careful than others, some homosexuals less promiscuous, some hemophiliacs less in need of transfusions. Yet we have watched for years as the epidemic has gone on tripling every year. One reasonable explanation is that the virus has gone right along improving its infectiousness each year as it faced a more and more stubborn set of potential hosts.

So precise and so savage is the LAV virus, that two theories of its origin come quickly to mind. The first theory is the "plot" theory; that the virus was built with recombinant DNA chemistry by some evil geneticist as a form of germ warfare. The trouble with that is that the place worst hit is Africa; some African countries probably have an infection rate of 20 %. It would take a superb genetics laboratory to tailor make a virus (the Russians couldn't do it), and no African country has an enemy with the resources to bring it off.

The other theory is the ever popular demonic theory. Many Haitians are involved with a phenomenon called Santeria. This is widely known as the Voodoo cult. Santeria rituals involve a number of unwholesome things, including a substantial amount of blood spilling. To the best of my knowledge, their priests limit themselves to animal blood and human bloodletting is not part of the tradition. Thus (unless they're up to something I don't know about) Voodoo ritual is not an active source of human infection. On the other hand, they do call upon names I do not remember from Sunday school, do kill birds and animals to propitiate spirits, do meet in secret at grotesque alters and do attempt to manipulate that which is holy for their own ends. In short, this is devil worship in the strictest sense.

But if LAV was introduced by some evil Voodoo priest, why should it strike his own people? And if LAV was, on the other hand, sent as divine punishment for Voodoo, (and homosexuality and drug addiction) why should it strike the innocent? Why strike the hemophiliac? Why the newborn?

For there is one other particularly distressing thing about the virus. It seems to be spread from a pregnant woman to her unborn child. Further, a newborn child must do a great deal of work with his lymphocytes in order to be immunologically capable of dealing with the world. This seems to be adequate to trigger the AIDS syndrome. Newborns with LAV get AIDS. Do not depend on the next generation to solve this problem.

So there seems to be no case for the demonic theory. Besides, for whatever reason, Haitians are no longer mentioned as a high risk group. Whether the sudden silence is due to a real decrease in their rate of infection or whether it is a result of civil rights litigation, I don't know. I wish I did.

The virus seems to have come from an African monkey, introduced into the human population by some accident like a bite from a sick animal. It would be nice to think that the disease had always been around. After all, a hundred years ago, we would have had no idea what was going on. We wouldn't even know we were having an epidemic. Twenty years ago, no one knew what a "helper cell" was. What is the evidence that this is really a new disease rather than new recognition of a disease? Well, they had a lot of blood samples that had been taken years ago while working on the epidemiology of hepatitis. They went back to the old blood samples and checked them for antibodies against LAV. No antibodies. The epidemic is real.

On the other hand, that is not to say the virus is new. It may have been there in the monkey population as long as there have been humans. It may have had access to the human population in the past. There are plenty of civilizations that have vanished, more or less mysteriously. Perhaps we are not the first people to establish rapid communication, high population densities, lots of travel and, it seems, a lot of homosexuality and promiscuity.

There you have it. Enough to give you the fantods, isn't it?

Now let me venture an idea. AIDS isn't a problem. LAV virus isn't a problem. It's only a symptom of a problem. If it hadn't been this, it would have been something else. The real problem is that there is a widespread belief that people are disposable.

First, here is an example. Of blood donated at centers in some African countries, up to twenty per cent of the units show evidence that the donor has been exposed to LAV virus. These aren't hemophiliacs or IV drug abusers, and that seems like a very high rate of homosexuality, particularly when you think that half the population is female. The Africans themselves say that the high rate of LAV virus exposure is due to use of unsterilized needles. I see no reason to doubt them. In somebody's mind, the people were disposable but the needles were not. That is sort of a crudest case of the idea of disposable people.

There is a strategy that will stop the LAV virus in its tracks, and everyone knows what it is: strict celibacy except between married people and strict monogamy in marriage. No adultery; no divorces. And a blood test for exposure to the LAV virus before getting married. Use of a screening test on blood used for transfusions eliminating any blood from use that might carry the virus has doubtless already reduced the spread by that route to a very low level. And homosexuality and IV drug abuse would be eliminated if people would only stop doing that sort of thing.

The miracles that can save us fall into three categories.

First, perhaps the problem is not so bad as it seems. Perhaps it will go away; that hardly seems likely by past experience. Perhaps it will stay confined to the groups already mentioned; but it has already been reported in the non-Haitian, heterosexual, non-hemophiliac non-drug-using population. Perhaps only a small proportion of those exposed to the virus will ever show any sign of disease; that is devoutly to be wished. The numbers are not yet available, since the blood test is less than a year old, and what you want to know is how many people with a positive blood test will develop symptoms in twenty years. Even if this number is very low, say a third or less, it is still doubtful whether those who are infected but remain symptom free can ever have healthy children.

Second, perhaps our established institutions will come through. After all, there are tremendous resources that can be brought to bear on the problem. We have, after all, trod the moon. Surely our civilization, including government, private institutions, trained people and public concern, can handle the problem, once it is defined.

Well, there certainly is a defined problem. And indeed, good brains and good resources are being applied. After all, part of the very fabric of our social order is dealing with epidemics and taking care of the ill. Could we not do that, it is quite doubtful that civilization would have spread, or even survived. Public health is our best trick. Infectious disease took a terrible toll on the American Indian. It took a terrible toll on the European settlers, too, but had the Europeans suffered to the same extent, they would not have survived. Deeply rooted custom and prior exposure to the diseases made all the difference.

During the era of the Black Plague, one town was suffering from the epidemic. A particular clergyman had a ring of stones placed around the town and forbid anyone from outside to come past the ring or anyone inside to leave. People from neighboring towns would come bringing food only so far as the ring and leave it there to be picked up later by the townspeople. The social fabric held. There was plague in the town but no famine.

One of the laudable things that has been done is to publish advice for people who have a positive blood test. (Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Suite 207, 10400 Connecticut Ave, Kensington, Maryland 20895.) Such publications can be expected to provide all the scientifically valid advice that is available anywhere. Anyone with a positive test or fear that he has been exposed should also properly get in touch with a physician. He is another example of the kind of resource society has to offer.

The establishment deserves a lot of credit. The epidemic was recognized years ago, when the numbers involved were relatively quite small. It was recognized as a serious threat and every effort was made to understand it. The virus has been identified, the mechanism of the disease described, blood tests developed, the course of the disease characterized, the complications learned and proper diagnosis and treatment of them published. The people at greatest risk have been named and reasonable precautions outlined to reduce spread of the disease. And the public has been kept informed of what was going on right along. At the same time, the interests of the individual victims have not been forgotten.

Caring for the ill is basic to society, more basic than police and military effectiveness, more important than controlling trade and writing laws. There is a second function of civilization, even more basic than that of caring for the ill. That is the function of preventing panic and mass hysteria.

As an example of what can happen in the absence of a formal government, let me tell you the story found in Judges 19 through

21. It is a deeply troubling story told with the Bible's usual blunt dignity. A careful reading, and reading this sad tale with care is not easy, reveals a number of points of ambiguity. I think the ambiguities are important, and will point them out, calling them ¹¹a¹¹ and "b" when two defensible interpretations of the story are obvious.

The story starts at a time when the children of Israel have escaped Egypt and have lived many years in Canaan without a government, relying instead on the wisdom of their judges and the valor of their warriors to maintain their society and hold their enemies at bay. A rich Levite was living on mount Ephraim with a woman from Bethlehem. She was (a. his wife, but she was unfaithful and deserted him. b. his mistress; she lost her respect for him and went back to her home.) He followed her to her home where (a. his father-in-law greeted him joyfully and entertained him royally for five days. b. her father was reluctant to turn her back over to this man and stalled with what turned into a five day elbow bender.) Starting imprudently late in the day, the Levite, his servant and (a. his wife were overtaken by dark in Gibeah, a city of the Benjamites. b. his mistress were still staggering around drunk in the streets of Gibeah when dark fell.) An old man took them in.

Men of Gibeah beat on the door of the old man's house and (a. demanded the Levite come out and have sex with them. b. taunted the people inside, accusing them have having a homosexual affair and mockingly insisting on being included.) The old man (a. would rather sacrifice his daughter than his guest, and offered her and the Levite's woman to the crowd. b. taunted them in return and mockingly offered to send out the women, describing in some detail what they could then do.) The men at the door persisted, and the Levite actually did turn the woman out of the house, where she was abused all night. In the morning, she was (a. dead. b. too emotionally crushed to speak.)

The Levite returns home and sends a message to all Israel. (For details, consult your King James Version.) When Israel, horrified, gathers, the Levite tells them when happened but adds that the men of Gibeah meant to kill him. Israel unites as a man against Gibeah and attacks 400,000 against 27,000, which includes Gibeah and all the tribe of Benjamin. But the men of Benjamin are valiant, (a. including 700 left handed slingers who are very accurate. b. and include the very men who abused the woman in the first place.) After three days of battle and at a cost of 40,000 men, Israel destroys every man, woman and child of the Benjamites except (a. 600 men b. 600 men, who include the same street scum again.) At this point, Israel is overcome by remorse and decides not to destroy Benjamin after all. So they first find cause against one of their villages, which they destroy except for four hundred virgin, which are given to the surviving Benjamites. That leaves two hundred Benjamites, and Israel arranges for those two hundred to abduct young women from the town of Shiloh.

So revenge and remorse come full circle, with all Israel accomplice in the end to much the same thing done by much the same men that caused over 60,000 deaths in the first place. Not long after, Israel takes a king.

You may hear, from time to time, of some government, not your own, ignoring the LAV viral epidemic, denying it exists, accusing other countries of perpetrating a plot. Do not judge hastily. They are doing their job. The mark of a sound government is the tone, "This is all routine; business as usual."

The mark of good media coverage is, "This is significant. This is sensational." The Levite knew what he was doing, after all. And once he had sufficiently shocked the people with facts they could not deny, they were all too ready to accept as facts things they could not check. Beware the sensation, "This is important. This counts." Beware your own judgement when something is so impressive it takes your breath awa~; it may just have taken your good sense as well. Beware particularly any hint of sensationalism on the part of a government or anyone who would control you. Permit yourself to be impressed by that which you worship and by nothing else. And watch what you worship, too. Israel checked every day with the Lord during the destruction of Benjamin, yet repented in the end.

Caught among the multiple needs of staying in power, staying in budget, staying within the limits of human ingenuity, treating the sick, protecting the well, presenting a consistent policy in a perilous and rapidly changing time, and avoiding a public panic, the government of the U.S. or any country with reported LAV infection has few options. The absolute best you can ask of such a government is that it be reasonable and prudent. That it be absolutely rational. That it adopt and suggest those policies and only those policies that can be expected to slow the spread of the disease and will actually be put into force.

Thus you will see things happening that will make you want to scream. Here are a few:

1) Haitians have suddenly vanished as high risk group. Why? Well for one thing, there's not much point in telling folks, "Don't be a Haitian." And for another thing, it's no good creating a group that might be a target for anger. If there really has been a drop in the disease among Haitian immigrants, that is very interesting. If not, that is less interesting.

2) The Communicable Disease Center says children with AIDS should not be excluded from normal schools unless they are habitual biters. (How many classmates one is allowed to bite, I don't know. A one a month cigarette habit would be a mild one.) Well think a minute. The LAV virus lives mostly in the t helper lymphocytes, right? And AIDS is caused by no t helper lymphocytes, right?

So AIDS is not contagious.

At least they don't think it is. It is the carrier state that is contagious. The threat is from the still healthy person with infection. It would be rational to quarantine every carrier, if they could be found, but it would simply be too expensive. Ultimately it would mean partitioning the country into two communities. Since one community would be less desirable than the other, such a quarantine could not be enforced.

3) Food workers are not tested for carrier state. Well, it would be expensive. It would be unfair to the person for whom the test was falsely positive. An annual test would reduce by less than one half the risk of spreading a disease that seems to be tripling every year. And, of course, that would be the kind of policy that would increase alarm, not decrease it. Besides, current thinking is that food probably can't carry the infection.

4) The Supreme Court seems to be getting ready to abolish all laws in the country against sodomy. Well, that's business as usual. Besides, such laws don't seem to have done their job.

5) No official policy has been issued warning people that homosexual and even heterosexual promiscuity is able to spread the disease and that people ought to absolutely stop. They just don't think people are going to listen.

6) Condoms are recommended. I asked M whether condoms ever break. He asked how he should know. So I asked what he thought, and he said, "Well, I guess some break and some don't. Just like everything else." So I asked how often they broke, and he said, "0, well. Not often, I guess you'd say. Like not all the time." I asked how often, and he said, "Most of them only seem to break once." Poor fellow. Terrible affliction, having to tell the truth all the time.

But it is rational to use them. For everyone. All the time. Except when making a baby. At lest until we know more about what is going on.

And that is what you want from your government. And of course I mean the extended government, including actual political institutions, schools, universities, professional societies, responsible media coverage, trained professionals, and church sponsored activities. You even want it from your artists, dramatists, writers. The pressures are so critical you must insist on rationality from your respected institutions. No panic and no wishful thinking permitted.

There's only one problem. There is no rational hope. There is no obvious limit to the spread of this. A worst case prediction gives us all LAV by the end of the decade and AIDS by the end of the century. A more conservative prediction gives us all LAV by the end of the decade and all newborns AIDS from then on. More cheerful predictions take longer. We need a miracle. Being rational alone might not do.

I suppose we might enlarge our egg and sperm banks, against the day we have the technology to create true test tube babies, but the chance of that working is remote. From medicine, put your

hope in a vaccine or a cure.

I suppose we might establish "safe" schools, to which children are admitted only if they live with both parents and that all in the household test negative each year, and are expelled in event of divorce, separation or positive test. The staff could be required to be married, stay married, and test negative regularly. I do not know if such an institution would be feasible or even legal in this age.

We need a miracle of a third kind. We need to be judiciously irrational, all of us.

There are many things that are not proved to work, forms of irrational behavior, in response to any crisis, but they break down into two kinds: the good kind and the bad kind. The test among things that won't work is this: If the behavior would be good even if the crisis didn't exist, then it is a good irrational response. If it would be stupid and destructive in the absence of the crisis, it is a bad irrational response. If it would be all right in the absence of the crisis, but makes the crisis worse, it is a bad irrational response.

Here are three bad irrational responses.

1) We reflect that if the virus did not come from Haiti with the boat lift and if the Haitian is no longer at greater risk than others, at least it seems clear that this disease came from outside the U.S. So we re-write the lines on the Statue of Liberty thus:

Disease, the hopeless social cost to me.

I hold the bag behind the open door.

See what I mean? Bad taste.

2) We ostracize AIDS victims. Cruel and pointless. Even if the AIDS victim is still able to transmit the disease, he will be far less infective than the unidentified carrier, who might be anybody. If anything, it is the AIDS victim who needs to be protected, since an organism we harbor harmlessly can kill him. I confess that the indifference to the risk among people that insist children with AIDS be admitted to public schools rather puzzles me. Why not keep them out in hopes that a cure appears?

3) The paper reported recently that someone, who thought he had been exposed to LAV by another man, beat the man brutally. That was dumb. That was really dumb. The virus has been detected in just about every body fluid. Beating someone who may be a carrier might be suicidal.

So much for bad irrational responses. What irrational response might be a good idea? What, among the many things that are good ideas anyway, might be imagined to protect us beyond the rational precautions we all must take? I can only think of one.

Be gentle.

Avoid violence. Avoid all forms of violence. Take as an axiom that the human being is valuable. He is not disposable. He is worthy. He is unreasonably important. He is transcendently, supernaturally precious. The human is sacred.

His body is precious, his mind, his beliefs, his relationships, his heritage, his future. This is true of each and every individual all the time. If you have trouble remembering that, just assume that he has an immortal soul, and that every detail of his life will be remembered and cared about for all eternity. If you can't remember that, just remember God. If you can't believe in God, fake it.

Now if the advice seems inoffensive, it is because you have not thought about it enough. There is something in this to offend everybody. Gather round.

The body is precious. You don't brutalize it. You don't mutilate it. It goes without saying that you do not subject the body to sodomy. Also, you do not cut it up just for fun. But mutilation is widely practiced in our culture.

Ear piercing is an example. Now few like jewelry on a woman more than I. I have never seen a woman with too many bracelets. Rings on fingers and bells on toes are beautiful. Necklaces, arm bands, stone studded girdles, coronets, anklets, the more the better. But when a person pierces an ear, something different has happened.

Now before going on, I must make a special exception for sailors and for anyone who works around the water. Time out of mind, sailors have been tattooed. Remember, the sailor's first duty is to his ship. He may have to abandon every worldly possession at a moments notice if the ship needs him too. In a disaster, he may have to strip off his clothes and swim for it. The tattoo may be the only keepsake he has. It may be the only property he brings with him, and he may not know when he will visit any given port again. The tattoo is the sailors name tag. It is his badge. If he pierces an ear, it serves the same purpose.

But for the rest, piercing the ear is violent. It is a matter of putting the value of the ear ring higher than the value of the ear. And that denies the preciousness of the body. You will even see children with pierced ears. Presumably, the child has asked that it be done. If so, that child has already learned to value metal and stone above his own body. It would be a better thing to teach the child that his body was worth more. The day will come, if it has not yet, when someone will gets AIDs because of piercing an ear.

The tradition of the pierced ear is not a good one. Romeo likened Juliet framed against the night to a pearl on a black ear lobe. He got his color scheme right, but not his values. You see, a ring through the flesh is the mark of a slave. That's why you put a ring in a pig's nose; so you can drag him around. It gives you a place to put your finger that will hurt the pig but not you. Piercing the ear of a human slave, if you doubt me, is described in Exodus 21,6. The vile thing about slavery is not the hard work that is expected. Slavery is vile simply because it reduces a human to an exchangeable commodity. It deprives him of his supreme value and gives him a value that is measurable in terms of other things.

The tattoo, away from the sea, also suggests loss of freedom. Loss of freedom is no big deal, people sacrifice part of their freedom routinely. But the tattoo conjures up the branding of cattle, marking the bearer of sale or other disposition not of his own choosing. Or, just as bad, the tattoo is done for beauty, turning the human into a backdrop for a work of human art.

Any sport in which people are injured is suspect. Any sport in which human blood is spilled as a routine event is again a denial of the special worthiness of the human body. The day will come when one boxer gives another an LAV infection in the ring because of blood smeared on the gloves.

Another occasion when humans spill human blood for what can only be described as fun is circumcision of male infants. Indeed, circumcision is required in the Old Testament. But the requirement is withdrawn in the New, or at least so thoroughly reinterpreted as effectively to be withdrawn More interesting, in the New Testament, it is made quite clear that circumcision is a sign of submission. Sounds like slavery again, doesn't it? Circumcision may be a remnant of a time when most male children were castrated to make them more tractable slaves. Again, it is a denial of the preciousness of the human body. If you are in a tradition that honors the Old Testament but not the New, either change or hold that tradition very dear. It is purchased at terrible cost. I should think it would mean more if it were done during adulthood, when it could be a choice.

And, yes, circumcision removes healthy tissue. And, yes, it increases the likelihood of a tiny tear in the scarred skin. And, yes, there are no doubt people dying of AIDS right now for whom that might have made all the difference.

Circumcision is usually excused as being a medical necessity. There is a rare kind of cancer that is prevented by circumcision. It is also prevented by regular washing. So medically, circumcision only obviates the need for washing. Cutting off a part of the body because it is inconvenient contradicts the notion that the body is precious.

There is a more basic problem with circumcision. And that is that, done as it is on newborns, it is done without hint of anesthesia. The newborn is too uncoordinated to organize an effective defense. It mean risk of death or brain injury to put him to sleep. And anyway, anybody knows newborns can't feel, can't understand, can't remember.

Maybe. Or maybe as M would say, it's like everything else. Some do; some don't. Certainly the day will come when the victim learns what has been done to him. And certainly everyone involved knows what they have forced on a human being who had no chance at defense.

One last example of widespread failure to protect the body is the enjoyment of sports and music in which noise levels are so high that they damage the hearing. Now I will be the first to say that no one ever got LAV virus from a loud noise. But I would not hesitate to say that music is often played loud enough to damage ears. And the frenzied behavior and contempt for the body's soundness that much very loud music seems to foster may do more harm than deafness.

Another sign of the disposability, or at least the purchasability, of human life, limb and well being is, ironically, the law courts. There you have a permanent institutionalized system that daily places a price tag on a bit of injury here, a bit of unhappiness there. In recent years, many of those prices have been extremely high. Does this reflect a greater appreciation for the worth of the human? I rather think it reflects a greater conviction that there is nothing human than cannot be bought. It has again the stale smell of slavery; only the price is very high.

The mind, too, is part of the human. There are subtle ways the mind is assaulted. First, it may be manipulated. Frequently, when hearing something, you should ask yourself, "What effect does this person want to have on me? Why is he saying this?" Often you will get a lot more interesting and obvious answer than if you ask, "Is this true?" Second, the mind may be shocked. Sudden death, ungoverned anger, imprudent or casual sex, and the human body presented in undignified way - these the mind finds shocking; these render the mind vulnerable. That was the strategy of the Levite's message to Israel. Third, the mind can be bored. This, too, tends to make the mind vulnerable, to make it persuadable.

With a television set and any luck, you can probably get your mind assaulted all three ways in a single evening. Don't.

The crude ways of assaulting the mind involve poisoning the brain. Nicotine, alcohol and caffeine do it to varying degrees. More to the point, considering LAV infection, is the whole gamut of illegal drugs. Intravenous drug use has been implicated in the spread of the disease, the virus being spread by the use of dirty needles. Rationally, the problem can be met my providing clean needles to anyone who wants them. Rationally, the danger is avoided by not using intravenous drugs. But if the mind is something of value, something too important to be tampered with with chemicals, then marijuana, cocaine and other mind altering drugs should not be used. Who knows: perhaps if the less dangerous drugs were not used, the channels along which the deadly ones are distributed might dry up too. That would deprive the virus of one of its major routes of spread.

I understand that 25% of children in this county try marijuana at least once BEFORE they reach high school, and 8% of seniors use it at least once a week. I understand the rest of the country is not much different. That represents quite a distribution system.

Beliefs are part of a person. Challenge them too radically, and it is very likely you will kill the person. Take them away, persuade him that what he cherished nobody else thinks is important at all, and he will probably crave death. Beliefs are the pillars of the temple that is his personality. Take out too many, and down comes the roof. You cannot treat a person with reverence without respecting his beliefs. Indeed, despair does not cause LAV virus. But it does work the other way round.

A human's relationships are precious. A man and a woman are expected to marry and stay faithful for life. If that were the case in the overwhelming majority, the overwhelming majority would escape LAV, barring a mutation that let the virus spread by casual contact. The authorities don't seem to think we can do it.

But we must do it. It is a matter of survival. It is a matter of love. Love is the perception in another of that which one understands to be the best in oneself. That is not a condition that fluctuates with season and hormones. That will not change. In finding one to love, one looks among those that are like one. The extent to which another is different is the extent to which love cannot exist. (Excluding strictly sexual differences.)

But love is also a verb. Love is a transitive verb. That means doing something. When one has found love (or done ones best), from then on to love is to take action, to talk, to plan. Love deliberately, consistently and consciously. Make a phone call or give a lifetime of devotion, but do something when you love. We may survive yet.

Heritage is part of a person built in as deeply as the beliefs. Deserting or asking another to desert a heritage is a form of violence to a person. It is also violence to the group that is deserted. Show me two lovers who are obviously different, say physically different, and I will say that is a violent scene. If you doubt me, go back and read those three chapters in Judges yourself, not my summary, and every verse say, "If only there had been someone for her in Bethlehem."

But in a more practical sense, socially tight knit groups will be less vulnerable to this plaque than groups that are more open. It is often said, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." (Sometimes accidentally.) Well I say viruses don't cross streets; people cross streets. And borders. There are people right now who think they are good people, who are actively engaged in encouraging immigration into this country. Your tax money right now is being spent to move children around in school buses for no reason except to broaden their social horizons. We have grown casual about such upheaval. We think it natural. Yet it is violence all the same. Avoidable violence. An affront to the integrity of the human involved. It is not immigration that is a threat; it is any migration that is a threat.

Last, the future of a person is important. Frequently I hear the words, "Well, I don't care what happens after I'm dead." That is the common thing to say in response to a challenge of the form:

don't you see where this kind of thing has to lead eventually? When someone tells me, usually with great emphasis, that they don't care what happens after their own death, I usually reply, "Well, I care. And since you don't care about the future and I do, why don't we do it so there will be a future of the kind I want?" I seldom get any takers.

I suppose one thing that must change when thinking about the future is genetic counseling for people who may be hemophilia carriers. Classical hemophilia, because of the particular way the human chromosomes are arranged, is inherited from mother to daughter or son. Women who have it almost never express it, they carry the gene but do not get the disease. Men who have the gene get the disease. In the past, a woman who was a known carrier was told that half her sons would have the disease and half her daughters would become carriers. Despite this advice, the disease has not vanished. After all, you can't ask people not to have children just because it's a bad idea, can you? Yes. You can. If people are important, it is important not deliberately to put them in the path of a disaster of a lethal disease.

Which brings us to the real underlying cause. The point where humanity and reason parted ways long ago. That is exponential population growth.

Look at almost any graph of anything over time, provided it is not a cumulative graph, and it will go up and down. Prices go up; then they go down; then they go up; then they go down. It gets hot; it gets cold; it gets hot. There is a wet year; there is a dry year. Hemlines go up. Ties get wider. Life does not run a perfect cycle, but things change in BOTH directions. Well for several years, the human race has been facing exponential population growth.

What does the future hold for the LAV virus? Well it can't go on tripling every year in this country. It can't do that for another five years. There aren't enough of us for it to infect. The virus has created its own catastrophe.

So have we. Sooner or later our population had to fall. If one agent didn't do it, there would be another. If it is not LAV, it will be something else. I would not presume to analyze the various reasons why this disease is spread through areas of rapid population grown and dense populations. I merely point out that it is most prevalent in New York, California, Florida and Texas.

So how did it happen that we had too many children? Why, by not caring about them. If people did not have children until they could afford them, there could never be an overpopulation problem. All right, maybe there could, if there were an unexpected fall in the ability of the land to support life. But even an expected fall in the ability of the planet to support human life would not cause over-use if people only had children they could afford. As the end of supplies came into sight, prices would go up.

So I say that if people care and take appropriate action, the population will stabilize. If they do not care, it will crash. It is ironic that a wealthy land like ours should be hit early in the course of this disease. It is ironic that those now worst hit are generally people not having children. You would think that the LAV virus didn't have any better sense than people.

Finally, if the future is sacred, it is everybody's future that is sacred. And it is everybody's future that is in jeopardy. You can draw concentric rings about the population as a whole, about the population at high risk, about the population with the virus and about the population with AIDS. At each successive level the danger is greater and time shorter. But the danger is great and time short for all. We are all sitting around waiting for a miracle. No one can know at what level that miracle will come. If there is no miracle, then it doesn't matter which ring we happen to be in today. There is no level at which we can afford the luxury of despair or indifference.

No one is safe until everyone is safe, just as no one is happy until everyone is happy, no one free until everyone is free. And in this matter, everyone must hope if there is to be hope for anyone. If we all care enough, I think we'll get our miracle.

Meanwhile, don't forget to wash your hands regularly.

Booty

Editor's note: WILD SURMISE is an occasional newsletter on speculative matter. I told Booty that this month's article didn't seem to include any ideas that could be tested by experiment, that could be proved or disproved. He said that unfortunately the experiment is already going on out there. trick would be to stop it.

Next month Booty will unveil his time machine. He says that article will include an experiment so easy, so tempting, so full of potential that two or three of the couple thousand of you out there will actually try it. You will have time. We are going to skip publishing month after next, so staff members can run off to Australia.

We would like to welcome the Triple Nine Society to the mailing list. For a hint of the formidable energy they represent, have a quick glance at the last few entries in the LETTERS section.

The heart stoppingly beautiful official WILD SURMISE laboratory assistant was outside throwing bananas up M's tree. I asked her to knock it off and go help Booty perfect his time machine. Besides, one tree can only take so much weight. She said, "But he's cute. Sort of like a manatee." Maybe that's what "M" stands for.

According to M, his smarter younger brother, as a child, used to climb the trees in the neighborhood so high he would put his head and shoulders out above the canopy of trees. All the trees were about the same height, so the eye looked out for miles over a sea of green without even a hint of the town.

As always, we appreciate the help of all of you in keeping this motley crew anonymous.

copyright February, 1986, Wild Surmise

MILD SURPRISE

There is no tree at Half Way Tree. There was a tree once. It stood half way between the docks and the outside edge of the city, near the hills. Half Way Tree intersection still divides Kingston in half. The half closer to the water is more rich with human odors, charged with excitement and dangerous.

"Don't go past Half Way Tree," they told us. "Don't even go in broad daylight. Not even to drive through."

"So we won't get into trouble north of Half Way Tree?" I asked.

"I didn't say that. But if you do get in trouble north of the intersection, we may be able to find you. We may even come looking."

Legends, of course, are cheap. I have had a man point at the east slope of Long Mountain and say that there were cannibals on the other side. And the flank of the mountain we were looking at was on the edge of the town. When I climbed the mountain, I found I was overlooking the harbor. Long mountain, high and barren along its top, extends like a long arm deep into the heart of Kingston.

The names on the south side of Half Way Tree are not blood curdling: Whitf ield Town, Brentford Town, Jones Town (not THE Jonestown), Hannah Town, and Trench Town. We were particularly warned to stay out of Trench Town.

Pub crawling in the wee small hours of morning among the stews of Trench Town is particularly frowned on. And if the paper says that the bar you are in was shot up the night before, don't ask the hookers to show you the bullet holes. They were carried out on stretchers. With luck, the lights will be low, and if you ignore the eyes and teeth flashing around the room, you can convince yourself you are not really there, you are just going blind.

They do the limbo and the bamboo dance and have little skits performed right on the bar. The Patois dialect may be too thick to understand, unless the actor or actress is mocking a white person, in which case you may be able to distinguish the words. The plot generally isn't hard to follow.

Perhaps a plump young man will come out and break beer bottles. That's degrading already, since beer bottles are part of the national heritage, and not only is there a deposit on them; breaking them is against the law. Then he may nuzzle the broken glass. Then stand on it. Then jump up and down. Then lie down in it and have his girl friend jump up and down on him. I won't even tell you what they do with the torches during the fire dance. Grinning all the time, of course. Show biz.

You can see the same thing in the tourist hotels along the north coast, without the risk and without the sense of immersion in it all. They leave out a lot of the unsavory sadism, too. Like you don't actually see him breaking the beer bottles.

By way of urban renewal, they built a new tourist hotel right down on the harbor. It was called the Pegasus. It was brand new then, clean, modern, a sentinel of a dream of the future. It was one of the few real tourist attractions down town. It was the one approved place south of Half Way Tree.

I left work early one afternoon and went shopping for a present for my mother. It had to be nice enough to let in the house but authentically Jamaican. I guessed the gift shop at the Pegasus would be a good place to look.

The drive down was hot. There was a little lady selling fruit on her square of sidewalk. She bought it at dawn from a passing truck, sold it all day to passers by. Slept that night on the same square of concrete. There were bald dogs. There was the smell of rotting flesh every few blocks. The Jamaican buzzard, the John Cr0' flapped by at tree top level, its gut bulging from its most recent gorge.

I found a unaccustomed still had a place here.

parking place at the Pegasus and went in to the cool and sweet of the interior. It felt as if I layer of Kingston on my outside that seemed out of The gift shop was easy to find.

"Can I help you, sir-uh?" Her voice had the lilt of Patois, but with an unusually sweet tone.

"Grmph." I said.

"You can look around-uh all you like-uh, sir. if I can help you." Her ebony skin had a deep eye was clear, and she was, well, friendly. common in Kingston. Big woman, too. Well Soft voice.

Please ask-uh me rich lustre. Her That's not all so fed. Easy manner.

"Yeah. Well I'm lookin' for somethin' f'r my mother. You probably don't have anything."

"0 that's nice-uh, sir. I think I know just the thing-uh. We have some perfume-uh. We're particularly proud of our-uh perfume-uh."

She led me over to some gold leafed bottles. "It's real Jamaican perfume-uh, sir. I'm sure your mother will like it."

She put a finger over the top of the bottle and wet the tip. Then she rubbed the tip on the back of my left wrist, rubbing very hard. The perfume burned.

"Try it-uh, sir."

It smelled good. It was cheap enough. I bought it and left.

Back in traffic. Late. Hot. I was wearing polarized sun glasses, that turned the sky dark but left the world bright. The tempered glass of the windshields of other cars showed as whirling rainbows through the polarized glasses. Traffic rushed. You drive on the left in Jamaica, just like in a lot of island countries. My left wrist had been a little lame for months, making the floor transmission awkward to handle. Driving aggressively. Smell of more dead flesh. I came to Half Way Tree.

The main road trough the intersection runs east and west, three lanes each way, with a high concrete island between. The road coming in from the north is one way, four lanes coming into the intersection. The road from the south, which I was on, is two way, north bound traffic must turn. I was coming in from the south, and wanted to turn east, across four lanes of oncoming traffic. I was caught by the light and had to decide whether to turn in front of the traffic or wait for a break. If I went first, I would have to reach the traffic island before I could complete my turn.

The light changed. I went first. The little Capri wound through first gear and lunged into second. The opposing traffic came on like a wall of carts, jalopies, orange rented cars, red-and-green buses, banana trucks and rich folks' sedans. Dead center in the intersection, I put the wheel down hard and turned.

At once, magnolia blossoms floated on a warm summer evening, while a plaintive stringed instrument spoke with the moon, and a mockingbird improvised in answer. Somewhere an old house behind the shade trees....

The concrete traffic island swung into my path. I yanked the wheel back to straighten out, not caring to look at the traffic that loomed like a cresting breaker to my left. Sheared past the concrete with inches to spare. Checked the rear view, and three cars had followed me though.

More John Cro's. Somebody riding his heavy push car west toward the harbor, coasting down the long slope of Hope Road. Somebody mowing a large yard with nothing but a long knife and a little stick to lean on. Right turn onto Mona Road.

Dark swamp water reflecting the moss bedight cypress and the egret flaunting its splendid white plumage coming to rest among its fellows in the ruddy twilight to the chirping of frogs and...

Jam on brakes and swerve to miss a car that came up on the blind side. What's happening to me?

By the time I get home, I've found the pattern. I get this dreamy feeling every time I turn right. It even happens while I park the car. I go into my rooms and sit down. Every time I turn the wheel like this. Ha! It's the perfume on the wrist.

It doesn't work if you just smell it. You have to be thinking about something else. But if you just catch a wif of it, it takes you places you think you were once in a dream. I've got to get more of that perfume.

Two days later I bound into the gift shop at the Pegasus. "Hello, hello. How are you?"

"We don't-uh have any." It isn't the same girl.

"You aren't the same girl are you?"

"No-uh. I can't help you-uh." Not quite so pretty either. "There was a girl working here yesterday...

¹'She doesn't work here-uh. She was just helping me-uh." "I want some perfume."

"We don't have any perfume-uh."

"Of course you do. Right over there."

"No. There isn't-uh."

"Look. It's right here." I walked over and grabbed a bottle. She put out her lower lip in frustration.

"I paid four eighty five for a bottle like this two days ago." Defeated, she rang it up on the cash register.

At home, I eagerly opened it and splashed some on my arm. Well it smelled good. I mean it was about what you might pay twenty dollars for, maybe a bottle half that size. But that was all. Just very good perfume and a feloniously low price. Nothing that special.

I have thought about it a long time. I think it was her finger. I think the moisture of her own finger had something that added to the perfume. And I rather think her good disposition had a lot to do with it.