From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,sci.skeptic
Subject: AIDS
Date: 21 Dec 92 19:56:41 GMT
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Followup-To: sci.skeptic
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <1992Dec21.131625.19041@sei.cmu.edu> dbidwa@sei.cmu.edu (Daniel Bidwa) writes:
>thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank):
>>And, of course, having an accurate percentage is important for epidemological
>>considerations for certain afflictions.  If 10% of all men are gay, it means
>>that gay men are 19 times as much risk for HIV infection than the rest of the
>>population (assuming that the UL'ish notion that 50% of all HIV+ are hetero),
>>while if 4% of all men are gay, then gay men are 48 times as much risk, etc.
>
>Excuse me, but what the hell are you talking about? Sexual orientation has
>nothing to do with how much someone is "at risk". 

Which is why I can count the number of lesbian cases on one hand.

>(And yes, "50% of all HIV+
>are hetero" is probably wrong, but not because the percentage is too large.)

Check the data some time.  We're still not even at the stage where 50% of
*new* HIV cases in the US are from heterosexual encounters.

>Sexual activity is the determining factor, not orientation -- a man
>frotting with another man is much less likely to swap diseases with that
>person than, say, a man and a woman having penetrative sex without a condom.
>There is no "safe" sexually active social category.

And I could be stampeded by a rhinocerous tomorrow.  But some activities
are safer than others.  A male's more likely to die in a car accident driving
ten miles to your hypothetical sexual encounter than to contract AIDS from
that encounter.

And of course, there's the convenience that one cannot contract HIV from
someone who doesn't have it.  And the simply fact is that gay men are
more than an order of magnitude more likely to have HIV than the population
at large, and two orders of magnitude more likely to have it than the
non-IVDU non-hemophiliac heterosexual population.

>>Ironically, the constant repetition of the clearly false 10% overestimate
>>probably results in far too much of society's resources being devoted to
>>preventing heterosexual AIDS, and not enough devoted to preventing homosexual
>>AIDS. 
>
>Huh? So are you saying that a smaller estimation would lead to more support
>for preventing "homosexual AIDS"? This doesn't make any sense. 

Sure it does.  How much federal money is being spent to prevent AIDS in
North Dakota (total AIDS cases in twelve years: 25)?  How much of that 
money could be used for research instead of a wild goose chase?  How often
does the media cover heterosexual AIDS over the more common methods of
acquisition?  (Witness the recent Newsweek cover on "AIDS and Teens,"
even though the number of teens acquiring AIDS heterosexually has decreased
in the last couple of years, and has never been more than a few dozen.)

>I suspect that you have very little idea just how "society's resources" are
>being used against HIV and AIDS. 

Suspect away, but you're wrong.

Followups to sci.skeptic.
-- 
ted frank                     | thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu 
standard disclaimers          | void where prohibited
the university of chicago law school, chicago, illinois 60637