From: tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Reduce AIDS Funding
Date: 10 Apr 92 18:32:14 GMT
Reply-To: tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore)
Organization: ICS Dept., UC Irvine

In <1992Apr10.153343.23054@watson.ibm.com> jakec@ralvmm.vnet.ibm.com (Jake Coughlin) writes:

>jfh@greenber.austin.ibm.com (John F Haugh II):
>> And no, AIDS isn't caused by gay sex, but as others have pointed out
>> in medical literature, with homosexuals having very high rates for other
>> sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS does tend to favor people who practice
>> gay sex[*].  The 90% of AIDS victims in California that are gay bear this
>> out - and when you consider the 10% of California is "supposed" to be gay,
>> that's still quite a feat for a disease that isn't "caused by gay sex".

I *am* surprised to see this coming from JFH -- he's usually a
reasonable person in my experience.

>i take specific offense at your sentence "AIDS does tend to favor
>people who practice gay sex."  it's obvious that your deformed
>hypothalamus is applying too much pressure to surrounding gray matter.
>let me take you back to square one: AIDS is a virus.  AIDS is not a
>sentient being.  therefore, AIDS can not "favor" one thing over
>another.  as an analogy of my meaning, rocks are broken into pebbles
>and carried away by streams, but you can't make the claim that rocks
>don't "favor" water.  is this clear?

More to the point, if we were in Africa, JFH's little paragraph up
there would be utterly meaningless.  Aids is overwhelmingly infecting
the heterosexual population.  It would seem that a variety of factors,
from women's general position in society (zilch), marriage arrangments
(the younger the woman is, the better), to various tribal customs
(especially scarification, which is done sequentially on individuals
with absolutely no sterilization whatsoever) are the culprits in
Africa.

Aids is opportunistic.  Aids transmits most readily through media
which favor its propogation: blood, warm temperatures and open wounds.
Different cultural paradigms arrange these factors in different ways.
In africa, the heterosexual sexual customs were "perfect" for
transmission.  In the us, the male homosexual sexual customs were also
"perfect" for transmission.  The facts that

 * Aids originated in africa as a heterosexually transmitted disease,
 * in the us, heterosexuals and drug users are now showing the most
   rapid rise in infections, and
 * lesbians are among the lowest risk category

give us more than enough evidence that Aids is in no way, shape, or
form is "caused by", a "punishment for" or any other nonsense WRT
homosexuality.

As for funding...it is increasingly clear that Nature, in its
cleverness, keeps getting around us.  Everytime we have a cure or
deterrent for some class of diseases, Nature comes up with something
else unaffected by our methods (can anyone say "natural selection").
I think it's obvious that retroviruses are going to be the next set of
killers for us.  Research in this area is essential before the next
human retrovirus comes out.  Imagine a retrovirus passed by sneezing.

On the other hand, if we have another plague sweep the planet, perhaps
we'd have another chance to start over.  Sigh.

--Cindy
--

*  I would rather that a bigot thought I was a lesbian than that a
*  lesbian thought I was a bigot."        -- Tovah Hollander