U.S. President George W. Bush may be the best example of how ignorance can be wielded as a weapon, but most people who take advantage of their ignorance prefer to use it as a shield. Tadao Eguchi, the president of the hotel company that operates the hot-spring resort that canceled the reservations of a group of former Hansen's disease patients last month, defended the hotel by saying that the Kumamoto prefectural government, which made the reservation, neglected to tell the hotel the guests once had Hansen's disease. Because the hotel management "lacked sufficient knowledge," he said, its action, which he indicated was discriminatory, was "only natural."

Eguchi's remark has been roundly condemned, but the "ignorance defense" he employed is still in popular use. It was recently revealed that a preschool in Kofu rejected a student who had a parent, the school somehow learned, who was HIV-positive. The child was not, but the school still felt the child's presence would disturb other students' parents, who presumably might not know that you can't get AIDS from someone who doesn't have it.

Ignorance cuts both ways, especially when it comes to HIV. On the one hand, discrimination of the type practiced at the Kofu preschool intensifies the social stigma that HIV-positive people carry. On the other hand, people who don't know how HIV is contracted and spread are more likely to contract and spread it.