Relationships with AIDS patients: clinical metaphors and preventive bioethics

AIDS, more than most diseases, evokes compelling and tragic stories. The AIDS epidemic is "The Plague." We seek the optimally therapeutic relationship, embodied in the metaphor of the covenant. There is a fundamental human possibility of healing through dying. "Death teaches us to live." We advocate asking AIDS patients the explicit question, "How do you want me to work with you?" This can generate conversations that facilitate congruence in relationships. A reluctance to talk about uncertainties and limits is a major source of preventable ethical conflict and a major obstacle to fulfillment of the therapeutic possibilities of the doctor-patient relationship. The Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care (DPA) can be helpful in facilitating discussions with patients and their families. Successful "preventive bioethics" is communication that opens for the patient and doctor the broadest possibilities of hearing, understanding, and expressing. The doctor as parent, fighter, technician, teacher, and covenanter may be important roles at appropriate moments with a given patient who may be experiencing the disease variably as infectious chaos, brutal enemy, spiritual challenge, or opportunity for growth. The context of such communication is a real relationship that includes love, respect, humor, hope, and genuine interest in how this other person lives.