Cargo Cult Science: AIDS & Sex

"Yikes," says the casual reader, "I like sex, but I'm afraid of AIDS. Better use a condom. Better yet, let's just not talk about it."

For 25 years now, we've been taught that AIDS is caused by a virus, mostly transmitted by sex.

Millions of people believe this. Aren't folks dying in Africa from all this sex and all this AIDS? Shouldn't we help them? Shouldn't we send them billions of $$ for medicine?

Slow down, Pal.

Take it easy.

Take a breath.

Fact: The human species is at least 500 million years old. That means......shhh...... people have been having sex for a long time. Not decades, not centuries, not millenia, but millions of years. China has a population of 1 billion people. So, ahem, that means -- a heckuva lot of fluids being exchanged!

Even my Grandma from Salzburg, Pennsylvannia -- unpleasant imagery notwithstanding -- was once having sex.

I was taught that sex is a good thing, not a bad thing.

I was taught that sex breeds life, not death. Ask my wife and 2 beautiful children, if you don't believe me.

So, in addition to right-wing nuts Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schafly preaching to me about the dangers of sex, this little left-wing twit at the Public Health department is gonna lecture me about the "life-or-death" decision to use condoms?

Huh?

So, how did a supposedly fatal virus (HIV) emerge from the bath houses of the Castro and Greenwich Villiage circa 1981 to kill multitudes of innocent people and, more importantly, wreck our sex lives?

Well, the first crack in this fog of propaganda came from Michael Fumento in The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS. He simply looked at the numbers, and found that 95% of the AIDS victims in USA were (a) homosexual males and/or (b) drug users. Less than 10% of said victims were women.

Hmmm. How can a stupid, little 9 kilobase virus (HIV) discriminate between men and women? That makes no sense. Don't women get the flu, herpes, chicken pox, too?

So, Fumento says, Hey, you heterosexuals out there -- don't worry, you can enjoy sex again! It's mostly a "gay" disease!

"Hmm," says 'Ole Hank. This don't sound right. Mebbe they have been exaggerating the risk of heterosexual transmission, but for good motives -- they don't want to stigmatize gay folks. Hell, I don't wanna stigmatize gay folks. Hell, I don't wanna stigmatize anyone. The Fumento book refutes all this hype and exaggeration about hetero sex, but sheesh, does that really make it a "gay" disease? I mean, on a purely numerical basis, there are millions of more straight women, (about 141 million) than gay men (4.5 million). If only 1/10 women enjoy a good bugger every now and then, that would still exceed the frequency of anal sex by homosexuals.

Yeah, it's a little awkward to ask, but I will: Why aren't many more women contracting AIDS thru anal sex?

Mebbe, Fumento is only half-right. Mebbe, it ain't a heterosexually transmissible disease, nor a homosexually transmissible disease.

Mebbe, this damnable disease has not a damn thing to do with sex -- of any kind!

Enuf, sez 'ole Hank. We gotta get to the bottom (no pun intended) of this mystery

I need to see some epidemiology.

No, I don't want dumb-ass reports by gov't bureuacrats at the CDC, NIH, FDA.

No, I don't want dumb-ass literature from the local Planned Parenthood.

No, I don't even want to take Fumento's word as gospel.

I want the source. I want to see the peer-reviewed published literature. 'Ole Hank spends a fair amount of time reading, the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. This boy ain't a rookie.

But, where is the American Journal of Epidemiology? Ahh, here it is.

Padian, Heterosexual Transmission of HIV in Northern California: Results from a Ten-year Study, Am. J. Epidemiol., Vol 146: 350 - 357. (1997)

(Note to my friend, Dale aka Daf9: The title says Ten!)

So, what did Dr. Nancy Padian find? Well, lemme offer a few salient quotes:

1. "To our knowledge, our study is the largest and longest study of heterosexual transmission of HIV in the United States. The consistency of results over the 10-year duration argues for the validity of our results." (Padian, page 354.)

2. "We followed 175 HIV-discordant couples over time for a total of approximately 282 couple-years of follow-up." (Padian, page 354.) (Discordant couple means one is HIV+, one is HIV-)

3. "We observed no seroconversions after entry into the study."(Padian, page 354.) Huh, run that by me again?

4. "Forty -seven couples who remained in follow-up for 3 months to 6 years used condoms intermittently, and no seroconversions occurred among exposed partners."(Padian, page 354.)

So, lemme understand this, Nancy:

1. Over 10 years, a lotta HIV+ folks had the audacity to continue having sex with their beloved uninfected partners, ......and none contracted HIV;

2. Some used condoms, ....and none contracted HIV

3. Some refused condoms, ....and none contracted HIV

4. Even some – about 38% – had anal sex, ....and still none contracted HIV. (See Table 3, pg 355.)

So, Nancy, I gotta ask: How do you have a sexually transmitted disease, that ain’t transmitted by sex?

I mean when you write, "We observed no seroconversions," doesn’t that mean, ahem, no seroconversions?

Oh, C’mon Hank, just because the fact in this large, epidemiological studycontradicts our theory on HIV, doesn’t mean we have to jump ship. Hell, we estimate that heterosexual transmission is merely low, male-to-female is 1/1000, and female-to-male is 1/10,000. We won’t even mention the lack of seroconversions in the abstract -- Hell, most folks don’t even read these damn papers anyway.

And, more importantly, Hank, wear a condom for goodness sake!

Joking aside, in my humble opinion, the findings of this one paper obliterate almost 75% of most of the AIDS dogma we've been taught for over 25 years.  Some (all?) of those of folks should have become infected over the 10 years of the study. None did. No explanation is offered by the authors. Further, the authors note that 38% of the people engaged in anal sex, but no explanation is given as to why these women did not contract HIV.

There is only one reasonable, logical, scientific conclusion: The retrovirus HIV isn't transmissble by sex -- of any kind.

Much obliged

Comments

[Frankie W]

Hank, you've outdone yourself.

Why not post the Padian Report for others to read for themselves?

[Hank]

Frankie,

Well, I have little or no technical computer skills whatsoever, so I would have to git my secretary or someone to scan it into a pdf.

I may do that, friend.

[Hallie Selassie]

What about Africa!!!!

[Hank Barnes]

Correction:

I wrote 500 million years as the age of humans.

NO!!!!

From Wikipedia:

It has been estimated that the human lineage diverged from that of chimpanzees about five million years ago, and from gorillas about eight million years ago. However, in 2001 a hominid skull approximately seven million years old, classified as Sahelanthropus tchadensis, was discovered in Chad and may indicate an earlier divergence

Let's say 5 million, and just shut up!

[TS]

Hank, you have located the iceberg that sinks the ship.
You have busted the global paradigm bubble. Extremely witty post, too.