Besides the initial shock of the headline, making me want to go dive into something an disappear for a while, I didn't take it that bad. It must be a developed immuno-resistance to that kind of news.
It is a largely emotional issue. No one wants to be the escape goat or be indicated as the medium to some human tragedy as severe as the spread of HIV.
Now, how would that affect me that a Haitian immigrant was the vehicle of HIV to the United States? In no way unless some ignorant person uses some fallacious thought process to qualify an entire people and thus sprinkle me with some out of place labels. In the same way, a rational person's views of children should not be changed by knowing that a child playing with matches started the fires in California that perhaps burned his entire neighborhood.
Now that maybe millions have been spent to establish historical facts, how do you bring an equally scientific counterclaim? By spending your own millions? [Has that already been done in the 1980's as a basis to giving Haitians a break or was it a political move that was decided to "ease" the discriminations?] I doubt that's on the table and all that is unneeded diversion form research efforts to find solutions to a real problem; but one man will always find a way to finance a fantasy.
I am not an epidemiologist, but I don't see how the knowledge, acceptance or rejection of the path of HIV at this point in time can help with anything. The bottom line is that it's a waste of resources to try to win that kind of argument that will not help solve the fundamental problem. Haiti has made significant progress to reduce AIDS infection, maybe someone should buy a page in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Time and just print that with some statistics through the years.
That would be another waste, but since it's an emotional issue we are dealing with, one would probably feel good about it.
Ref.
Bluntly Speaking: AIDS, Race and Poverty
AIDS Virus Traveled to Haiti, Then U.S., Study Says