Don’t expect medicine to play the role of that imaginary deity who visits torments on the wicked and spares the just. That’s not what medicine or religion are about.

——Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Yes, but if it was, wouldn’t that be a cool premise for a story? Hounded by the Church for a crime he didn’t commit, Martin Luther is . . . The Fugitive!

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(Teresa’s point was originally made as part of a long and elegant rebuttal to the odious argument that AIDS sufferers, “ who engage in risky behavior and get sick should be lower in priority than people who have had nothing to do with their illness.” Being the thoughtless geek that I am, naturally I fastened on the alternate history scenario rather than on the main argument, retaining just enough sense of decorum to post here rather than there.)