Posted on 12/03/2011 6:26:52 AM PST by massmike
The school can’t win. If they admit the child and another child turns up HIV positive, they get sued. If they don’t admit the child, they get sued. In our society we are no longer able to protect ourselves or our children.
No one is denying the child the right to an education, he’s supposedly an honors student already. Were this admission to a private high school, it would be one thing, but MHS is a boarding school, and the student would reasonably expect to spend the rest of high school living there. Kids get sick over the year, and while his condition may be handled effectively through medication now, can that be true through four years of cold and flu seasons? There’s an extra burden on his potential classmates and the staff who work there to accommodate him. Those decisions should be up to the school, not a judge or faceless government panel who don’t ever have to deal with the ramifications of their decisions.
The story also describes the child as an “athlete”, likely meaning that he’d want to play high school sports. At that point, every high school in MHS’s league would be forced into making decisions about either assuming the increased risk (however small) of keeping their scheduled games, or facing a lawsuit.
The threat level partially depends on how imaginary the jokes of sexual harassment and horseplay in boarding schools are.
Boarding School? Wouldn’t this mean the school would have to assume complete responsibility for this ill child 24/7? Yes, ill child, as there is no cure for his infection and his immune system is compromised which could cause him to contract other illnesses. I would think an ill child should attend day school and live at home under parental supervision for the benefit of the child’s health.
Exactly! That is why TB is such a concern. TB by the way can, and is, communicated to those all around.
As you pointed out the HIV person is more susceptible to many types of communicable diseases which can, and are, spread throughout the healthy population.
And, you state, “unless body fluids are being exchanged. “
In a population of children that requires serious adult supervision.
The following is directly from the CDC!
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/hivtb.htm
“Worldwide, TB is the leading cause of death among persons with HIV infection.”
“TB is particularly dangerous for people with HIV infection. People who have both HIV infection and LTBI are 20 to 30 times as likely to develop active TB disease as those who do not have HIV infection. Worldwide, TB is the leading cause of death among persons with HIV infection and almost one in four deaths among people with HIV infection is due to TB.”
Home instruction
****************************
I guess that the discussion is over, then.
You're just wrong, plain wrong. Being HIV infected does not mean that a person is more susceptible to communicable diseases. It means that person MAY be more susceptible or MAY become more susceptible at a later date.
AIDS and being HIV positive are NOT, I repeat NOT the same thing. AIDS is the final stage of HIV infection, which we can put off for decades if not indefinitely with modern treatments.
Magic Johnson is a perfect example of this. He is infected with HIV, but 20 years later he is still not immuno compromised. His CD4T cell count is still normal, or was the last I knew.
It USED to be that HIV progressed from infection to symptomatic infection (formerly ARC) to AIDS. That is no longer necessarily the case. We've successfully held the disease in many patients at the latent infection stage for decades now, without progressing to symptomatic infection let alone AIDS. In many other cases we've arrested the progression at symptomatic infection, which while no picnic is not usually fatal without progressing to full blown AIDS. Too many on this thread are working with 20 year old information that no longer holds true.
All we know about this kid is that he's HIV positive. Given the current state of control-ability of the disease and his age, it is highly unlikely that his immune system is compromised. The days of kids like Ryan White dying in their teens are for the most part behind us.
And that’s a relevant comment to #16 how?
As an adult, having normal social contact with someone who is BIG positive would cause me no concern. Kids in a boarding school are a completely different subject.
maybe they can give him his own room. Can the school still be held liable if someone else in infected? I think that is unfair.
he should be banned from sports. sorry that is unreasonable and rediculous.
The public school systems provide Home Instuction for all kinds of disabilities including those that might endanger other students. It is a very fine program.
there are reasons not to have an HIV positive teenager in your boarding school, including sex between teens, risk of infection via blood or fluids (e.g. in sports), and the problem that if he has medical problems, the school doctor or nurse might not have the expertise to treat him.
If he is merely HIV positive, on retroviral therapy and has a low viral count, the school is wrong. (Most folks on retroviral therapy don’t have a lot of virus in their blood, so the chance of infecting others is low.)
The implicit admission in the decision would prompt an aware parent to withdraw their children.
In NY, an HIV+ female won a settlement with a boarding school but that was under NY state law, not the ADA. It's unclear of PA has such law since the focus here is on an ADA violation.
This isn't like adults on a college campus given the age of the student.
No amount of "education" is going to prevent accidents. That's a canard by activists who wish to pretend there's no risk. No "education" program will provide lawsuit protection if something did happen, the activists will always find fault.
If boarding schools must take HIV+ students, the law that so demands should also indemnify the schools from being sued into oblivion by the parents of other students so long as reasonable measures are taken to minimize risks and educate. Unfortunately, a jury could still be convinced the school is even 1% at fault and that would be little different from 100% at fault.
The child himself could be put at greater risk by being in a communal living situation with mono or tb or meningitis.
I wish the school well. I don't see why HIV+ is considered a disability. The HIV+ persons I've known were able bodied and living "normal" lives.
My whole problem is that the school is put in a "no win" situation by activists -- they are required to take on a risk and have no safe harbor from liability no matter what course they take.
IOW this HIV+ risk has to be allowed because of policy not science. Children must DIE to satisfy the pc lobby.
suuuuure, and that is why the criminal codes were updated to include an HIV positive person spitting on another is attempted murder.
This infected person in this school is the death sentence to this private school.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.