For years we’ve been told that HIV / AIDS is an equal opportunity offender. That everyone is at risk. The impression is made, in the news, that every blonde-haired blue-eyed all american girl is at risk from contracting the disease from heterosexual sex and that a heterosexual is at the same risk as homosexual men.
That simply is not the case, nor are the numbers even remotely close to bearing that out. Here are the CDC’s numbers for all cases reported through 2003 (the last year the data is available for):
Hmmmm… Not exactly the landslide numbers you would expect… But they are when you consolidate things a bit. Observe the following re-worked table:
I bring this up because of something I’ve noticed in the reporting and coverage of the AIDS crisis over the years. While everyone is technically at risk of contracting the disease, the disease is not the non-discriminatory monster it’s played up to be. In fact, it would seem that AIDS does a tremendous job of discriminating. If you’re a gay man, an IV drug user, or a gay man that uses IV drugs, you’re almost 5 times as likely to get the disease as any other group.
This is not to lessen the effects of the disease, or some attempt at discrediting the research being put in to find a cure. However, when I read something like this:
Those most vulnerable to the virus would be gays and intravenous drug users who share needles. But it could easily spread to the heterosexual community.
Ummm, sure it can. If the heterosexuals having sex happen to be doing so after having sex with someone who was in the high risk group. Hardly defineable as “easily” spreadable. It’s almost like the media is intentionally trying to turn AIDS into a disease that targets everyone equally so as not to offend the gay community.
The Daily News then, in the interests of raising public awareness and not spreading fear, throws the following FAQ out there:
What you need to know
How is this new strain different from previously known strains of HIV?
The time between infection and developing full-blown AIDS appears to be two to three months, as opposed to years. The new strain is also resistant to three of the four types of drugs currently used to treat HIV/AIDS.
Can it be treated?
No. Because this strain is multi-drug resistant, the relatively effective “cocktail” treatment of drugs cannot be used.
How many people have been diagnosed with the new strain?
So far, only one – a gay man in his mid-40s.
Who is at risk?
Anyone who has unprotected sex, especially unprotected anal sex, which increases the odds of transmitting all types of sexually transmitted diseases.
Could this be the start of a new epidemic?
Yes. But it also could be an isolated incident.
The impression created by the “who is at risk” question is that unprotected sex is the risk factor. Unprotected sex is most certainly not the risk factor. The risk factor is unprotected homosexual sex, IV drug use, or a combination of the two.
I hope one day there is a cure for this disease. I really do. The news that there was a vaccine that had some success in the lab a couple of months ago made me happier than any news I’ve gotten in a long time. But the credibility of organizations like the New York Daily News and other media outlets that continue to perpetrate the myth that all people are equally at risk of getting AIDS / HIV is seriously diminished, in my opinion. We can deal with the disease. Most Americans would love to see the end of it. But you don’t have to lie about it affecting everyone and putting everyone at risk in order to get the average person to think about it.
Telling us we all can get it isn’t going to find a cure for it, isn’t going to raise awareness of it, and isn’t doing anything to benenfit those who have it. Let’s cut the hysterics and theatrics and work on helping the people at the most risk of getting / transmitting the disease instead of projecting it upon everyone else.