Snape - a werewolf bigot?? Was: Say it isn't so Lupin!!!

[Dana]

No: HPFGUIDX 170222

Jazmyn:
> People with HIV do not turn into man-eating wolves every full moon 
> who maul and attack people. Comparing HIV to lycanthropy is like 
> comparing a glass of water (controlled by a glass) to a dam 
> collapsing  (uncontrolled water with the dam (potion) removed).  A 
> crazed wolf  moving at supernatural speed through a school full of 
> children can hardly be considered safe under any circumstances.  
> One slip-up and the wolvesbane potion taken too late and how many 
> kids would die or end up as werewolves???  Lupin was just REALLY 
> lucky noone got hurt, either  back when he was a Marauder or later 
> with Harry and co.  It may sound harsh of me, but anyone 
> with a disease that dangerous should be removed from society to 
> their own collony.
> 
> Would you allow a man with rabies to teach children?  Or Ebola 
> virus? If you found out your teacher had a dangerous disease, that 
> could be spread too easily, what would you do? There are just some 
> things too dangerous to expose people to and sometimes the needs of 
> the few must be set aside for the needs of the many.



Dana:
First of all you should really think again about what you are stating 
about people with dangerous diseases should be removed from society 
to their own colony. That is what people thought about gay people 
when the AIDS virus was rapidly claiming the lives of young man. They 
were shunted out and them being gay what was thought to be the cause 
and it was believed for some reason that G*d punish these people 
their lifestyle until it became a proven fact that this disease was 
not discriminatory at all. People did not want to work with them or 
even be near them. 

Acceptance may have grown but the comparison is certainly not to a 
glass of water to a dam collapsing. 
Many people did not know they were infected until it was too late to 
take the right precautions. People receiving blood transfusions were 
starting to die because at the time there were no tests to exclude 
infected blood. Stating that people with HIV CAN control their 
disease better then Lupin can his, is a false presumption for the 
simple fact that no one can control life at all times under any 
circumstance. Should they therefore be shunted out? Because they 
might at one time in their life's posse a risk to another human 
being? I think not because driving a car to work everyday is posing 
as much higher risk of dying then a person with HIV ever could. If 
you yourself are driving a car then you can posse a risk to another 
human being with that car if you in a moment of thoughtlessness hit 
someone else and either causing them a life long disability or death. 
That is why car manufactures are increasing the safety of cars but 
bikers and pedestrians are still at high risk regardless and the 
safety precautions are not able to prevent a serious outcome all the 
time. 

The diseases you mentioned are not comparable because Ebola is an 
airborne disease that does not use a human as carrier and the second 
is not infectious from one human to the next. Both diseases destroy 
the human they infect to such an extent that humans can't function 
normally (and the former kills the human it infects within a few 
days) 

We as a society should adjust so people with diseases can lead a 
normal life, not they should be removed. That is the easy way out. It 
is just ignoring these people and punishing them for things that are 
out of their control. It is like, let's put them in a colony and 
pretend they did not exist. Try to imagine it being your mother, 
father, brother, sister or maybe yourself and then tell me if it is 
still the preferred way to handle these problems. It is so easy to 
say that the needs of many are more important in a world were 
individualism is growing day by day. People are not just shunted out 
of society because they have a disease but also for having 
controversial ideas and life-styles. Today people are still dying 
faster by the hand of an non-diseases person because of wars raging 
in their country then disease is able to spread from human to human. 

Comparing HIV to lycanthropy, although as has been pointed out is not 
a perfect match, is not a wrongly chosen analogy as it is not the 
disease that is used as a comparison but the way these societies 
respond to these diseases that make the analogy a fitting one.  Both 
are life threatening and life changing diseases. Werewolves are only 
a danger to society once a month and only at night and they are all 
at the same time and not like they posse a risk at any other time 
during the month. Lupin risked exposing himself to others when he was 
young BECAUSE he believed in the safety precautions that his friends 
provided and the near misses proved to a young kid that indeed the 
safety precautions were sufficient. In retrospect it was a dumb thing 
to do but fortunately nothing seriously came of it. 

We use airplanes because we believe the safety precautions taken are 
sufficient to travel by these means but they never are fail proof at 
all times and neither are the safety precautions that a werewolf can 
take. Should we ban airplanes because they might fail us at one point 
in time and kill people if they do? They too can be used by people 
with evil intent to kill other people just like Greyback is using his 
werewolf part to cause fear. 

Brooding on the what if's is what people do but it is totally unfair 
as a driver of a car that had a near miss because he was doing other 
things then driving his car does not stop driving either because of 
that near miss. No, he promises himself to do better next time and 
does so until the scare is pushed to the background again and then 
makes the same mistakes again. Most people do things without thinking 
and all goes well most of the time but sometimes it doesn't and it 
has serious consequences. 

Lupin's slip up in PoA was not because of his human weakness and not 
because he was too arrogant in thinking he could get away with it or 
not even because he is a werewolf, they were human mistakes, mistakes 
we make every day and even our own mistakes can lead to harm to 
others even if we are not carriers of problems like Lupin has. It was 
a response to an urgent and extremely confusing circumstance and he 
took responsibility for that slip up and Sirius prevented that slip 
up to cause any permanent consequences. The what if's are irrelevant 
because you cannot change the outcome and the outcome therefore is 
the only thing that stands. The safety precautions DD put in place 
(the potion) were sufficient under normal circumstances but you can't 
prevent all things all the time any time, not even Lupin and he never 
bit or killed another human being in his life, actually not even you 
could. 

DD put safety precautions on the stone and still it was not 
sufficient enough to keep Harry out because of Hagrid slipped up. 
Should Hagrid therefore be shunted from society because he has 
trouble keeping his mouth shut? 
Parents encounter unforeseen dangers on a day to day basis too, for 
instance when their child pulls boiling water over themselves because 
the parents was distracted by the phone. Dangers in life are never 
always controllable unless you want to suggest that we all lock 
ourselves up in our house (which should then be empty and not shared 
with others) and never interact with others. Harry puts his friends 
in danger for believing in a false vision, should we pick him up and 
put him in a colony too? Especially because he is a danger to be 
around as a certain Dark Wizard tries to kill him all his life and is 
not afraid to use the people close to Harry as leverage? 

Most kids in one way or the other encounter stupid and dangerous 
things at one point in their lives. To still hold Lupin accountable 
for his actions when he was young while they actually never led to 
anything that is suggested that could have happened is saying that 
kids can never be forgiven for the mistakes they make and should 
still be condemned for it even if they wised up as adults. 

JMHO

Dana, who thinks, people should think about what they say before they 
make such extremely hurtful remarks. Let's hope these people never 
find themselves in the same predicament because it will probably 
change their views in seconds if it can be applied to themselves.