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From: werner@aecom.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: re: A Lay question about AIDS? (Why Gays?)
Message-ID: <1104@aecom.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jan-85 13:01:08 EST
Article-I.D.: aecom.1104
Posted: Thu Jan 17 13:01:08 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Jan-85 05:08:24 EST
References: <182@ttidcc.UUCP><8211@watarts.UUCP>
Organization: Albert Einstein Coll. of Med., NY
Lines: 43

> >From: molefeuvre@watarts.UUCP (Michael O LeFeuvre)
> >Subject: A Lay question about AIDS?
> >
> >        1.  Why is it so specific to male homosexuals?  I realize other
> >            people do get it, but the dominant group is gays, a very
> >            minority goup of the population.

> I know of two theories on this  point.  One  seems  reasonable,  the  other
> frighteningly paranoid.
> 
> Paranoid:
> It is rumored that AIDS may be  part  of  a  biological-warfare  experiment
> being performed by our own military.  The rumor contends they are testing a
> virus that attacks  only  people  with  certain  specific  body  chemistry.
> 				The Polymath (Jerry Hollombe)

	Where do people come up with these things?

	The virus has been around Africa for years, and does not solely
affect gays there.  
	It is passed, both in Africa and among non-Gays in the US (mostly IV
drug users) much more efficiently from men to women than from women to men,
mostly because semen contains cells that could be infected with the virus
(as does in some people, saliva). Hence it would, for similar reasons, pass
efficiently from men to men.

	It's not actually gays, per se, it's only sexually active gays, and
they are also highly overrepresented among a whole variety of rare diseases,
mostly sexually transmitted ones, but also hepatitis, etc.
	Also, remember, one of the first AIDS victims back in 1977 
admitted having over 2000 sexual partners (I think in the previous year alone,
but that number may be over several). A few people like that and that's all
you need for a major epidemic.
	
	Conclusion: given the mode of transmission of the virus (in blood,
semen and saliva) and the fact that healthy carriers can pass the disease,
and given the promiscuity of a visible subgroup of the gay population, it's
not really much of a suprise (now anyway that more is known) that gays are
overrepresented among AIDS victims.
-- 
				Craig Werner
				!philabs!aecom!werner
		What do you expect?  Watermelons are out of season!