While Claude Green was driving with his friend, Billy Snead, last summer, Green suffered a heart attack. Snead did what any good friend would do: he started giving Green CPR on the side of the road while waiting for help to arrive.

Help arrived in the form of Welch, West Viriginia police chief Robert K Bowman. Bowman ordered Snead to stop giving CPR, declaring that Green was HIV positive. In fact Green was a gay man, but was not HIV+; chief Bowman just assumed that because Green was gay he must necessarily have HIV. When Snead did not immediately stop giving his friend CPR, Bowman grabbed him by the shoulders and physically restrained him from continuing. The police chief also prevented anyone else from aiding Green.

When EMS services arrived ten minutes later, Bowman told the EMS personnel that Green was HIV+. To their credit, they ignored the police chief and performed CPR on Green. Unfortunately, Green died shortly after arriving at the hospital. Now the ACLU is suing the police chief and the city of Welch for discrimination and blocking life-saving medical treatment.

ACLU staff attorney Rose Saxe said, "Bowman's actions were a frightening abuse of power. "It's hard to say what was more shameful: that Chief Bowman assumed Claude Green was HIV positive solely because he was gay, or that Bowman was so ignorant about HIV that he felt you couldn't safely perform CPR on an HIV positive person."

Green's sister Anita Tickle, a practicing nurse, echoed that sentiment saying, "We have brought this lawsuit to stop Police Chief Bowman from hurting more people. I have spent my life helping sick people, including people with HIV, and I cannot understand how Bowman could possibly justify his actions. We've known for two decades that HIV is not easily transmitted and that it is safe to perform CPR on someone with the disease. That's something a police chief ought to know too."

The Centers for Disease Control has recorded no instances of HIV ever being transmitted via CPR. The cynical side of me would say that the police chief already knew that, but saw his opportunity to cause a gay person to die and took it. In my opinion, Bowman is lucky the ACLU isn't going after wrongful death. Update: there is a claim of wrongful death in the lawsuit; claim 91 summarizes: "Bowman's actions of preventing others from providing life-saving measures to Claude and of refusing to perform CPR himself because of Claude s perceived HIV status were wrongful acts that destroyed any chance of Claude s survival from his heart attack, making it substantially more likely that he would die, and Bowman is liable for these acts and omissions."

---Nick

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