No reports of KS or immune problems surfaced in those heart patients, but the inhalant was used only rarely and during the patients' later years. Even so, there were early warning signs about the recreational use of nitrites in the medical literature beginning in the 1970s. This last point was underscored when, on the eve of the AIDS epidemic, a researcher at the Food and Drug Administration warned that if a certain metabolization occurred, nitrites would produce potent carcinogens. Hank Wilson, a gay activist in San Francisco who founded the Committee to Monitor Poppers in 1981, is candid about why poppers are so prevalent. If you're having casual sex, in a park or bathroom, wherever, you don't have as much foreplay, you're more orgasmic-orientated.
Poppers facilitate quick anal intercourse.
Analyzing the data from three early CDC studies, Haverkos and other researchers found that out of 87 patients with KS, PCP, or both, all but three admitted to using poppers. Surrounded by stacks of medical journals in his cramped office, Haverkos gives four main reasons why he links KS with nitrite use. After warnings about nitrites spread through the gay community in the mid-'80s, both the use of poppers and the incidence of KS declined. This suggests that HIV alone is not sufficient to cause the disease, and that whatever does cause KS is not readily transmitted through blood. The third reason Haverkos suspects a nitrite connection to KS is that the disease is caused by an abnormal growth of blood vessels, and nitrite act on blood vessels.