The July 4th Knucklehead Marathon Part Eighteen

Today's eighteenth winners are Urmila Kalra and Abhilasha Gupta. They get the award for the following.

LUCKNOW, India (AP): Two doctors in northern India were suspended after refusing to deliver the baby of an HIV-positive woman, forcing her husband to handle the delivery, officials said Saturday.

Doctors Urmila Kalra and Abhilasha Gupta of the gynecology department at Lala Lajpat Rai Medical College in the north Indian city of Meerut were charged with dereliction of duty, state government spokesman Diwakar Tripathi said.

"Investigations have proved that the doctors did not perform their duties and refused to give treatment to an HIV-positive lady who was in the last stage of labor,'' Tripathi said.

The Medical Council of India has set up a panel to investigate the case, and if the doctors are found guilty they will be stripped of their licenses, said Dr. Debashish Ganguli, a council official.

In tradition-bound India, AIDS is a subject of taboo and shame, and infected people face tremendous discrimination.

Gupta and Kalra refused to help Sunita Abbas, 28, when she came to the hospital Wednesday to deliver her fourth child, her husband Raees Abbas said.

"I pleaded to the doctors to come and help me and my wife. They refused, saying that my wife Sunita is HIV positive,'' he said. Raees, a painter, said doctors sent him and his wife to a filthy room with a soiled mattress and torn sheets.

The doctors explained how to deliver the baby, and after the boy was born asked him to collect the waste and burn it behind the hospital, he said.

Urmila Kalra and Abhilasha Gupta should be drummed out of medicine for their failure but first I make them today's 18th Knuckleheads of the Day.