Move bar to 4 minutes 41 seconds to begin this video story.
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PROSTITUTE BELIEVED TO HAVE AIDS SURRENDERS, IS JAILED *
The Miami Herald - Feb 28, 1984
THE REGION; Escapee Gives Up*
nytimes.com - Feb 28, 1984
This story has not previously been told.
It was 25 years ago, February 1984, that 60 Minutes revealed the story of a New Haven prostitute and heroin addict whose baby was born with AIDS and never left Yale-New Haven Hospital, living his entire, nearly three year, life in quarantine.
At first 60 Minutes refused to do the story after coming to New Haven to discuss it because, they told me, it was not a microcosm of something univeral (the criterion for all their reports) since AIDS was transmitted exclusively by gay males.
Their producer returned to New York after our discussion and the matter was over, I thought.
Two weeks later he called me and said he had been checking around and discovered that in Africa 90% of the AIDS cases were transmitted heterosexually and that he would return to New Haven to film the story.
Recall that in 1984 HIV had not yet been discovered, so there was no test to determine one had AIDS. The only conclusive symptom was the collapse of the immune system in the final stage of the illness. Further, the disease had come to be taboo since it was associated primarily with gay males.
One Yale professor stood up in a public meeting, pointed his finger at me, and told the audience "Shun this man" for bringing 60 Minutes to town to persecute this woman."*
He was afraid the attention would result in her being quarantined, and by later extension, the quarantine of all who had AIDS, especially gay men.
I disagreed.
In a state which had seen the Planned Parenthood victory Griswold v. Connecticut, I argued there would be no persecution. Indeed, once heterosexual transmission was known to be a possibility, the "gay disease" superstition would evaporate.
So it has.
Besides, how could I be silent knowing my silence would send others to horrible, and at that time, certain death?
Officials at Yale - New Haven Hospital and elsewhere criticized me for revealing confidential information.
So be it.
Paul D.Keane
M.Div.'80
M.A., M.Ed.
*It is worth noting here that when this woman was arrested after it was revealed that she had AIDS, I arranged for the best Civil Liberties lawyer in Connecticut, John Williams, to be her attorney at no cost to her. It is further worth noting, that I refused to cooperate with 60 Minutes unless they agreed not to use this woman's real name. "Helen" is the pseudonym they agreed on.
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