In the spring of 1991 Dr. Laurence Spang was cleaning teeth and filling cavities in his seventh-floor office at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal jail of many narrow windows at Van Buren and Clark. Two years earlier, he had tested positive for HIV.
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In a bid to clear his conscience (“I get upset if I get a parking ticket,” he says), Spang got on a plane for Washington, D.C. There, on July 22, 1991, he told an assistant surgeon general about his HIV status. His superiors at the U.S. Public Health Service, which provides medical and dental care in federal prisons, immediately put him on administrative leave and kept him there for several days while they huddled with bureaucrats from the Bureau of Prisons to decide what to do.
When Spang got back to Chicago, a research team from the Centers for Disease Control spent two days questioning him in a hotel room. They reviewed his medical and surgical history, asked about his medical procedures, pored over his meticulously kept treatment records, and toured the prison dental facility. In their report they recommended that certain patients be notified and tested: an individual who could have come into contact with blood from a cut on Spang’s finger, and the inmates Spang treated during a two-week period when he had a skin rash (which wasn’t believed to have been HIV- or AIDS-related). The CDC saw no reason to notify other inmates.
“I was very naive about the process and really should have sought legal help before I started disclosure,” says Spang now. “I thought it would be handled very quietly.”
Once a private person, Spang now speaks openly about his condition and tries to educate other dentists. He advises them to get good disability insurance and consult a lawyer before disclosing their status. He is one of 30 professionals in the HIV Peer Network, a speakers’ bureau funded by AZT manufacturer Burroughs Wellcome. He also helped the American Dental Association develop a support program for HIV-positive dentists and those who treat infected patients. This week he’s speaking at the Greater New York Dental Association Convention in New York City.
