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Aren't we past this point? AIDS is only a gay disease

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Aren't we past this point? AIDS is only a gay disease

from JoeUser Forums

I see words in articles that just continue to fan flames for me.  Ooops, I used the word flames, and some persons might think I was discussing flaming, like in homosexual and because of that will figure that whatever happens to whomever I was talking about is just fine.

Well excuse me, but it's not fine.

As an example, there are words like:

Regardless of what you've been told, in America the vast majority of AIDS cases come from promiscuous sexual behaviour. Although there were cases of AIDS contracted through blood transfusions in the early years, the supply has been pretty well safguarded against such future incidents, at least on a widespread basis. And sorry, your Aunt Sally's advice notwithstanding, there are no proven incidents of HIV transmission through deep kissing.

Even if AIDS is strictly a disease that is prevalent among a community that is practicing abhorrent behavior, there is no excuse for ignoring it and the people that are suffering from it.  There's no excuse (except outright bigotry and homophobia) to consider it a disease that anyone deserves to contract.

There are any number of diseases that afflict the population of the world, and as I said previously no one disease really deserves more attention than any other when it comes to finding a treatment or cure, or developing a vaccine or other preventive measures against such diseases.

Has there been a very vocal homosexual community pushing research into treatment for AIDS, and pushing for developing vaccines and such?  Yes there has, but I don't begrudge them because of it.  I don't wish AIDS upon members of that community or any other.  I don't wish it upon people that have been promiscuous, and I most certainly don't wish it upon the people that they come into contact with over their history.

There are other problems that deserve attention, heart disease among them, cancer among them, and others that may only affect a very small portion of the population.  I feel for all of the people affected by all of these diseases, but again, I don't want to see some priority system developed that says that we must work on this issue first, or that issue second, and so on.

I want cures and prevention for all of these things.  I want to see ALS wiped out.  I want to see Alzheimers become a distant memory in the history of humanity.  I want cancer eradicated from our lives.

I want all of these things and more, while still wanting to see diseases like AIDS get attention too.

I hope in the future that the doctors and researchers that are working on AIDS are able to take the efforts to other areas and vice versa.  There are more than enough issues to go around and more than enough issues to need attention from the medical community and society as a whole.

I also really hope that the future sees us clear of jealousy and bigotry.  Jealousy of the attention that one group gets in trying to spur attention to their issues, and bigotry related to clustering victims of some diseases into a category of people that deserved what they got because they were deviants and couldn't or wouldn't help themselves avoid the behavior that helped them contract the diseases.

politics
16,772 views 59 replies
Reply #51 from JoeUser Forums Top

My problem with AIDS coverage is that in the United States it really is overwhelmingly a disease of gay men but has been portrayed as a disease that nearly anyone could get which is not being very honest.

For a number of years, more money was being spent on AIDS than cancer research and heart disease research combined.

Moreover, there are some pretty awful diseases out there that are just plain blind bad luck (such as various autoimmune diseases).  AIDS, by contrast, really can be largely controlled through safe sex practices.  I'd rather see attention and funding going towards finding cures for diseases that strike randomly and affect considerable numbers of people.

Reply #52 from JoeUser Forums Top

Your words were the ones that gave the impression that you feel that AIDS is a disease that impacts only people that are bringing the disease upon themselves because of their behavior.

Statistically speaking, what % of those who get HIV get it due to non-behavior? I remember the statistic was in Bernie Goldberg's book "Arrogance" and it was less than 1%.  That is, 99% of people who get AIDS get it through doing things that are known as high-risk behavior.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be researching a cure. Similarly, I think we should work to find a cure for lung cancer even if most people who get it are getting it through smoking cigarettes.  But in the United States, AIDS basically is a gay disease.  That's not the case in Africa and to a lesser extent Russia (And other former Soviet-bloc countries)

But let's be honest here, if there was a disease in which 98% of the people who got it were say female we would call it a woman's disease.  Like say breast cancer (men can get breast cancer too but it's still routinely referred to as a female disease).

It's only because gays have successfully established themselves as a victim class that we have to tip-toe around the fact that AIDS in the United States is basically a gay disease or at the very least, a STD.

Like I said earlier, my issue with it is that we spent ridiculous amounts on a desease that can a) be largely avoided and b) has relatively few victims relative to other diseases that are very hard to control against.

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #53 from JoeUser Forums Top

Promiscuity does not cause AIDs. A virus does. Promiscuity only increases your chances of being exposed to it.

That is the same for many diseases, however.  Skin cancer is caused by damaged DNA in the skin reproducing. It only takes one cell to get hit just right to do it.  Being in the sun all day only increases your chances of getting it.

Too many of our decisions are based on emotion and not enough on analysis.  "Lots of people" is a meaningless concept.  As a practical matter, nearly all Americans who contract HIV are homosexuals who lead, by their own admission, promiscious lifestyles.  That doesn't mean there aren't thousands of monogamous homosexuals (or heterosexuals) who have bad luck and get a partner who just didn't care. But we have to look at the bigger pictures.

It's the "there are lots of people who.." line of thinking that causes us to have all kinds of waste in our society.  Real solutions require cold hard calculation.  We should be compassionate and help as much as we can those who get a disease through non-behavioral reasons.  But we should also keep an eye on the full scope of the disease.

Reply #54 from JoeUser Forums Top
My problem with AIDS coverage is that in the United States it really is overwhelmingly a disease of gay men


I found both this article and the comments interesting and decided to see if I could find some statistics about how different people acquire HIV. Here's what I found: http://www.avert.org/usastatr.htm

For rough estimates, based on those tables I've come up with:

1. There are roughly 425K people (adults and adolescents) living with AIDS in the 50 states and DC.
2. 23% are women and 77% are men
3. 65% of those women acquired AIDS through heterosexual sex. Nearly 13% of the men acquired it through heterosexual sex as well.
4. Another 20% of men got AIDS from drug use.
5. 52% of all AIDs cases are from "male to male sexual contact" -- which means that 48% of all AIDS cases are not.

Based on these stats, I'm not sure I would call it an "overwhelmingly" gay disease.

Reply #55 from JoeUser Forums Top
I'm not sure I buy that site's statistic. If I have time, I'll try to dig up where I read the 90%+ stat.

However, just casually looking at your page, it appears about 90% got it from male to male or IV drug use with most of them getting it from male contact.

And it's mostly (by far) men who get it.  I still don't trust their stats but it is possible that the stat I remember combined IV drug users and gay males together.

Still by the stats on that page, less than 2% of males got AIDS due to other reasons (i.e. monogamous sex or transfusion or whatever).  Check out how they define "high risk hetero sexual behavior". They're not talking about the people Bakerstreet refers to.

In fact, only around 2,000 women TOTAL in the United States fall into the category Bakerstreet described.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to cure this awful disease.  But some perspective is needed here.  Should we be spending billions of dollars on a disease that would only have fewer than say 7,000 people (TOTAL) infected due to no fault of their own?

Over 98% of people who have AIDS got it either through homosexual sex, drug use, or high risk hetrosexual sex which is defined by people having sex with people who they know are at high risk of having HIV (gay men or IV drug users).

So like I said, it's a matter of proportion.  It is a disease that is mostly gay men and overwhelmingly (98%) behavior based.


Reply #56 from JoeUser Forums Top
overwhelmingly (98%) behavior based.


I would agree with that.

I didn't search long, so there are probably better stats pages out there. I'd be interested in seeing what you find. I wasn't sure what I would dig up when I started looking--I actually thought the stats would confirm what you were thinking, so I was a little surprised at how many IV drug use cases there were.
Reply #57 from JoeUser Forums Top
I'm in the same boat.  I am wondering if what I read wasn't lumping the two together.
Reply #58 from JoeUser Forums Top
Wassa matter "danielost"? Figure out you been stomped on and then ran away to hide? Instead of just admitting you were wrong and taking it like a man?


nope went back to driving taxi

i said that h c was a poop desease

the other one said it was a sex desease

but really it is a blood desease

ie you can only get from blood
Reply #59 from JoeUser Forums Top
"In fact, only around 2,000 women TOTAL in the United States fall into the category Bakerstreet described. "


I support your argument wholeheartedly, but I know that fact is way off base. The problem is that cases of HIV in the US are not reported consistently. The kind of people you are citing there are the ones that are most always totally resistant to offering any sort of information, and go through their lives with no one knowing that they are HIV positive. The shame of their spouses bringing it home, alone, would be enough to keep them quiet, and then the stigma of the disease finishes the equation.

I can say with no shadow of a doubt that there are hundreds of such women living in my state, alone, and this isn't one of the "big" AIDS states. That doesn't count the ones that don't know they have it, and will live monogamously until it gets out of control, or they simply die. The fact is we ignore or underestimate this segment of the population because they AREN'T a threat, and they have no wish to be counted.

On the other hand the people who spread it the most are the squeaky wheels. We buy them condoms and free needles, then pay billions in medical costs once they fall through the safety net. We give them vouchers for the trip to the doctor, and they bitterly complain that they have to pay the bus fare to pick up their FREE, $1k+ per month prescriptions.

Until something is done to rectify this, we won't win any battle against the disease. All we are doing is enabling those who spread it, and allowing nature to weed out the ones who live conscientiously and didn't deserve the disease in the first place. In the case of HIV the squeakiest wheels cause the tragedy, whether they are greased or not.