From: manley@optilink.COM (Terry Manley)
Newsgroups: ca.politics,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Gay/Lesbian Equal Rights Needed
Date: 21 Dec 92 06:28:22 GMT
Organization: DSC/Optilink Access Products

I'm not sure what this has to do with Gay/Lesbian Equal Rights or
ca.politics or talk.politics.misc but here goes:

In article <1992Dec19.191744.20514@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> gsh7w@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Hennessy) writes:
>In article <13676@optilink.COM> cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>#> Do you consider 4000 *NEW* AIDS cases amoung heterosexuals to be "a
>#> few"? 
>#> 
>#> -Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
>#
>#Subtract out the prostitutes and those having sex with IV drug
>#abusers, and it isn't 4000, and you know it.
>
>Err, after thinking about this, why *SHOULD* those having sex with IV
>drug users be subtracted out? The transmission mechanism is the same
>as in with sex with non  IV drug users, the only difference is that
>those having sex with IV drug users, and actually just people who ONCE
>were IV drug users, they may not use drugs anymore, is that the
>percentage of the partner being HIV+ is higher.

You can not project infection rates of the general heterosexual population
based on the infection rates of IVDAs and their partners.  These people
are in NO WAY representative of the general heterosexaul population in
terms of exposure risk.

People look at the % increases for heterosexuals and assume that rate
applies to all heterosexuals - when it clearly does not.  Worse they
use these numbers to provoke hysteria.  This hysteria sometimes
creates public opinions that leads to public policy that is not in the
best interests of those most at risk (via allocation of limited public
funds). The point being heterosexuals not involved with IV drug users
or prostitutes are at little (note I did not say zero) risk of
contracting HIV. You also need to think about transmission rates.  The
transmission rate among IVDAs that share dirty needles is very high.
The transmission rate from male (which IVDAs most commonly are) to
female is higher than female to male.  This leads to a high rate of
infected women partners of IVDA males.  What does this have to do with
heterosexuality?  Most heterosexuals are not IVDAs or partners of
IVDAs, so these higher rates should be attributed to drug use not
plain-old vanilla heterosexual sex. 

Again I'm not trying to say that heterosexuals don't need to worry
about HIV infection - my point is it is not effective public policy
to keep telling everyone that they are at risk.  It costs a lot of
money to tell everyone this and that money is then not available to
inform truly at risk individuals who are not (for whatever reason)
getting the message.

>However, with a million people being HIV+ in the US, unless you are in
>a permanently monogomous relationship, you need to take the
>precautions anyway.

This 'million' number has been claimed for years, the source for this
number (I recall) has stated that it was chosen arbitrarily, and that
no research exists to back up that claim.  It is interesting that for
the last (say) 5 years we have been told there are a million people
living with HIV.  If this epidemic is truly growing at the rate some
people are claiming I'd have expected that million number to have
changed. Yet there it is.  Still the same. 

Let's look at it another way. Even if a million people are infected,
what is the risk for contracting HIV in a single sexual encounter?
Let's say there are 100 million sexually active (non-monogamous)
individuals.  There is then a one-percent chance of meeting an
HIV positive person.  What is the transmission rate? Some studies
of heterosexual cohorts indicates a 1 in 100 (I'm not sure of that
number, the latest studies come out of UCSF, Dr Nancy Padian). Now
do you want to spend a lot of the AIDS budget targeting a population
with a .01% per encounter infection rate, a population many of whom
have already recieved the message?  Should you instead spend the
money on those you know aren't getting the message?  Just look at	
the CDC stats to see who they are.  They're mostly not just anyone.

For those of you who are bound to complain let me add the following:
everyone who does not know the STD status of their partner should
assume their partner is infected.  Also the statistics in the preceding
paragraph are from memory and may not be current (although I believe
them to be reasonable approximations - if you have better numbers I'd
love to see them).

A real problem in this society today is the number of people who
are informed but act in an irresponsible manner anyway.  These people
are a real menace, thankfully due to improved blood screening, most
of us will not be harmed by them.  We also now have to worry about
the breeding grounds being provided for tuberculosis (sp) by 
irresponsible individuals who refuse to follow through on their
treatment once they start to feel better.  A few people in this society
are creating third world conditions and thereby endangering the
rest of society.  I don't know the solution for this, but in the case
of TB it is starting to look like quarantine is called for.  These
same people through lack of personal responsibility then scream
that it is "genocide" for the rest of us not to pay their medical
bills and pay for the research to find a cure (not that that will ever
happen - show me one cure for any viral infection) for a disease
that is easily preventable by personal responsibility.  And yes
that includes smokers, people with unhealthy diets (nutritional and
sexual), and people with unhealthy lifestyles (sedentary, sexual,
drug abusing ( and yes that includes alcohol)). At what point
am I (society) no longer responsible for the mess that people have
made of their lives?  And what rights do these irresponsible people
have to make a claim on the lives of others?  Those dying through
ignorance have my pity, the others have made their bed and now
they can die in it - at their expense, not mine.  Go ahead now,
flame away.

BTW: I recommend that anyone interested in AIDS/HIV get
     past their initial response to the title and read _The
	 Myth of Heterosexual AIDS_ by Fumento.  (Also the fairly
     recent _The History of AIDS_.)

--
dave
manley@optilink.com
Newsgroups: ca.politics,talk.politics.misc