AIDS Scare: Overstated Risk for the Major Group--jk

I recall reading articles in Scientific American recounting the AIDS pandemic and the percentages for various groups. Three things stood out. One, that the type of AIDS in this country was not easily spread through vaginal sex.[i] Two, that on an average it takes well over 200 times of unsafe vaginal sex for a woman or man to become infected from their lover. Three, that not having sex with people in the high-risk group entails a risk rate and anal sex would have a very low rate, about 1/100^th the rate of those in the highest risk groups. In other words, women who do not have sex with men that are bisexual or intravenous drug users, and do not have anal sex, these women make up under 4% of all the HIV cases—not bad given that.

	Year	Region	Number
1	2003	United States	1,039,000 to 1,185,000
2	2002	United States	850,000 to 950,000
3	1993	San Diego	New cases 1,115
4	1999	San Diego	New cases 515
5	2004	San Diego	New cases 495
6	2004	San Diego	Existing cases 10,300
7	1980-2003	United States	74% are gay men
8	1980-2003	United States	9% are heterosexual IV drug users
9	1980-2003	United States	10% are gay IV drug users
10	2003	United States	40,0000 total new cases
11	1980-2003	United States	47% black
12	1980-2003	United States	34% white
13	2003	United States	Blacks new cases 21,304
14	2003	United States	Hispanic new cases 8,757
15	2003	United States	Whites new cases 12,222

From #7 & 8 we find that 83% belong to high-risk groups. Thus 17% are straight men and women who are not IV users. Under 10% of the U.S. populace are gay or IV users this entails that 90% of the population get the remaining 17% of AIDS. I shall for this low risk populace “guessimate” the risk:

LOW-RISK-GROUP

5) Risk for sexual active person over 10 years with 10 partners-per-year would be 1 chance in 750 that they would acquire AIDS.

The risk for an active person is far lower than that of being serious injured in an automobile accidents—for which 41,000 die and about 200,000 are seriously injured per year. The risk of getting AIDS from unprotected vaginal sex from an infected person is under 1 chance in 200—anal sex has a far greater risk for the epithelium there is far more permeable. Thus though 25% of those with AIDS don’t know it, the risk is quite low of getting it from just a one night encounter. From #11, the risk of contacting AIDS through sex with a black is over 10 times the risk of contacting it from a white person (11% of the population has 47% of total new cases, versus 70% which has 34% of total new AIDS cases).

Budget for prevention in San Diego has been cut from $3,000,000 in 03 to $2,000,000 in O5 (more Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”).

[i] Three common explanations are given. One, that the strain of HIV virus does not readily spread through the vaginal wall. Two, that in Africa and other places with a high rate of infection have a common “benign” venereal disease that increases the rate of infection dramatically. Three, that in those countries with a reported high the rate has been greatly exaggerated because of some other common disease which gives an abnormally high rate of false positives. An investigative reporting article in Rolling Stones states that the reporter didn’t find sufficient people dying and ill to support the numbers given by the WHO, and blamed it on funding issues; viz., that the false positives entails more funds for the war against aids, and thus it is not in their interest to expose this error.

[ii] Source of stats, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6/14/05, A1, p1, and for #13-14 CDC at www.cdc.gov/hiv/stats.html

[iii] 74% of women by the age of 30 have had 2 or more sexual partner, 70% by the age of 25, and 65% by age of 20. Based on US government census, pg 13 of PDF file found at www.census .gov


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