Heterosexual males and AIDS

[shiznitz]

I took a lot of grief on the old boards for my statements about how AIDS is NOT a concern of heterosexual men. I was not smoking crack at the time.

[Mesozoic]

What did you smoke before deciding to bring it up again for no reason?

[shiznitz]

Good point. Blame it on NCAA hangover bitterness.

[Ironwood]

I see nothing in that article that even suggests that it's not a concern of heterosexual men.

[Anonymous]

As I've said repeatedly, it's quite apparent that being a neocon requires a blind eye towards facts.

I'd say shiznitz is a model neocon.

[DarkDryad]

It clearly states at the top of the page its in the GOSSIP section, or as we like to refer to it in my home, dog papers. Speaking from a few years of medical experience and training it most definately IS a concern. Hetrosexual mailes are the smallest percentage but mainly only because its harder to infect males than females due to the lack of damage the peen recieves during sex. Females do breal lots of small spider veins when having sex thus thier infectability is higher.
Please try and do some research befor posting stuff from the gossip page .

Added
Heteronsexual males and females while in the lowest percentage group to actually contract AIDS still are at risk if they dont use protection or abstain regardless of what numbers say so if you are at risk its a concern.

[shiznitz]

It might be on the GOSSIP page, but the article cites a BOOK that was villified by the LEFT for highlighting FACTS that didn't mesh with the liberal orthodoxy.  Ironic how I get accused of having a blind eye while pointing people to an example of exactly that.  The gay lobby overemphasized the danger to heterosexuals to protect themselves politically. This is neither debateable nor defensible.

[Snowspinner]

And the insane AIDS rate in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa is because, what, the darkies are all fags too?

Reality does not support your conclusion.

I mean, what is the evidence there? An article in Details that makes the claim? Because lord knows men's Cosmo is THE LEADING SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL IN THE WORLD.

[Ironwood]

I was in the Gay Lobby once.

It was very well decorated compared to the Living Room.

[Kylaer]

Actually, the most recent studies of Africa put a large percentage of the blame on reusing needles in hospitals, not sex of either the hetero or homo type.

[Chiastic]

It's really just a question of degrees of risk.

Africa isn't the greatest comparison to make.  African males tend to have way too much sex with way too many women, way too many of whom have HIV/AIDS already to be really protected by the laws of probability.

I was watching this documentary on Angola the other day and they were interviewing these guys who were saying that people (including women) think there must be something wrong with a guy (beyond a certain age, of course) who doesn't have at least half a dozen regular "girlfriends."  And don't even get me started on the rate of completely unregulated prostitution over there.

All that link really says is that the relatively low incidence of HIV/AIDS in the US (I assume it's the US), along with our relatively low levels of promiscuity and the inherent "difficulties" of transmitting the disease to men via old-fashioned sex make it highly unlikely that Joe Average straight guy is going to contract the disease.

The actual point here seems to be that straight guys shouldn't worry about getting AIDS from unprotected sex any more than they should worry about getting into a fatal car crash.  The odds of that car crash are probably better, come to think of it.

Which seems, well, blindingly obvious.  The real question here is how much the society-endorsed fear of AIDS restrains sexual activity and thus holds the infection rates down.  If this revelation leads to Bill Hicks style Fucking in the Streets, we might have a problem.

[HaemishM]

I took a lot of grief on the old boards for my statements about how AIDS is NOT a concern of heterosexual men. I was not smoking crack at the time.

What the hell were you thinking when you decided to drudge this up from the old board? I guess you all can carry on, but if I see this go 'stupid,' it's gone - tread lightly.

GO STUPID? Fuck, this thread started there and took a left turn into retard town after word 2.

If you feel so confident, plz to try to convince all the women you want to have sex with of this as well. That way you'll infect only the stupid ones when you eventually get it yourself..

[Snowspinner]

Actually, the most recent studies of Africa put a large percentage of the blame on reusing needles in hospitals, not sex of either the hetero or homo type.

Would you like to offer evidence of that claim, or is it just one of those unsubstantiated generalizations people like making?

[Chiastic]

Well, it does make sense.  Africa is poor as shit.  African hospitals are extremely strapped for medical supplies and probably proper training for medical personnel as well.  The AIDS rate in parts of Africa is as high as 70%.  In those areas, the odds are that Patient X has the disease.  If clinics in those places are reusing needles that haven't been properly sterilized at all, it would really surprise me if the "dirty needle" method of infection wasn't a major problem.

[Snowspinner]

Sure. It makes sense. Except that I'd be surprised if a lot of AIDS patients in Uganda have ever seen the inside of a hospital.

No. The large problem, I'd imagine, is the total lack of birth control there, the lack of education on how to actually use a condom, and the lack of understanding among the general population of what "infectious disease" means.

[Kylaer]

Actually, the most recent studies of Africa put a large percentage of the blame on reusing needles in hospitals, not sex of either the hetero or homo type.

Would you like to offer evidence of that claim, or is it just one of those unsubstantiated generalizations people like making?

If you clicked on the link I handily provided in my post, you would find some evidence.

Here is the link again, just in case you still don't see it.

[Mesozoic]

Hmm.  I'm surprised that this hasn't really entered into the Gay Marriage debate.  Since sexual promiscuity is a risk factor for AIDS,  promoting monogamy can save lives.  But I guess the religious right would rather deny gays and lesbians the right to marry, and then point to the incidence of AIDS in homosexuals as evidence of God's disfavor.

[Chiastic]

Except that I'd be surprised if a lot of AIDS patients in Uganda have ever seen the inside of a hospital.

Would you like to offer evidence of that claim, or is it just one of those unsubstantiated generalizations people like making?

The very fact that AIDS is such a problem over there seems to run counter to the theory that the people are so isolated from one-another and civilization at large that they've never even seen the inside of a clinic.  I don't imagine that a significant percentage of African medical facilities are for-profit enterprises.  So, I'm going to go out a limb here and guess that most Africans could (and maybe do) receive basic medical care on some charity's tab.

If they don't, it's probably because they don't want anything to do with western medicine.  Which wouldn't speak highly of the prospects for educating them, especially if people they know go to some underfunded clinic healthy and come home sick.

I'm of the opinion that there are certain issues here that need to be addressed before certain other issues.  Trying to educate the general populace is great, but if alot of what they see in the real world is the failure of western practices to yield the promised results, that education probably isn't going to take.  The first thing we have to do is prove to them that we're not full of shit.  Once we get that out of the way, I'll bet that the education problem will largely solve itself.

[Snowspinner]

Actually, the most recent studies of Africa put a large percentage of the blame on reusing needles in hospitals, not sex of either the hetero or homo type.

Would you like to offer evidence of that claim, or is it just one of those unsubstantiated generalizations people like making?

If you clicked on the link I handily provided in my post, you would find some evidence.

Here is the link again, just in case you still don't see it.

Blame the forum text that doesn't make links stand out obviously. Sorry.

Though one points ought point out that this is still only 30% of the infection rate, and thus still not a very substantial point in light of my claim which is that the real world clearly does not bear out the claim that heterosexual men will not get infected with AIDS through sex.

[Bloodrage]

Ok, I was going to post about this earlier, but I was trying to avoid the stupid.

There was a CNN article (I think) a while ago that went into some depth about the AIDS transmission rate in Africa. Basically, everyone in Africa maintains 2, 3, or more, long-term sexual relationships. Africa is a big network of sex, and when some dick in the network gets HIV, everyone else gets it in short order.

The rest of the world doesn't work like Africa. We keep our long-term relationships sequential, for the most part. HIV also doesn't appear to be as readily transferred as you would expect. The odds of getting it go up with the number of encounters you have with an infected individual. Prostitutes and dirty needles cannot account for 70% infection rates, but a network of linked individuals does.

I was unable to find the article I read; this one will suffice.



http://big.berkeley.edu/ifplp.hivtrans.pdf

[Snowspinner]

Except that I'd be surprised if a lot of AIDS patients in Uganda have ever seen the inside of a hospital.

Would you like to offer evidence of that claim, or is it just one of those unsubstantiated generalizations people like making?

Yes. My evidence of the claim is that, if someone showed me a study that claimed that most AIDS patients in Africa get hospitalized, I will express surprise.

Though if you wanted something else, we could go with http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/aids/stories/treatment/">this

Sample quote:

"When a baby gets bad," Dr. Iwan Bekker, head of pediatrics at a South African hospital told AIDS Weekly, "we won't admit it for a second time, but will tell the mother to take it home and let it die."

Thoguh the whole article pretty much gives a sense of the unlikeliness of getting any medical treatment outside of the cities.

[Chiastic]

Ok folks, here's the problem with links.  If you use BBCode to link something, it's not gonna underline it and thus make it hard as hell to see.  If you use html, everything is underlined and everyone is happy.

We could make the text color for links wildly different than normal text, but it makes everything look like shit.  I'm not entirely sure why BBCode isn't underlining linkage, it could be because the board is set to allow html.  I'm checking on it.

For the time being though, just use html if you want people to see your glorious linkage.

[CrashCat]

We could make the text color for links wildly different than normal text, but it makes everything look like shit.

 I guess I can use html or add my own tags, but seriously, what's so crappy about a different color for links?

[Snowspinner]

It's not crescent fresh.

(In other news, I just downloaded the whole second season of Sifl and Olly)

[Alrindel]

a) The NY Post is a rag very slightly higher on the journalistic food chain than the Weekly World News, but not very much.

b) This article you're waving is a gossip column in the aforementioned rag that is citing an article in a Conde Nast fashion magazine as its rock-solid scientific evidence.

c) The Center for Disease Control has statistics about HIV infection in the USA here.  Of the roughly 886,500 diagnosed cases of AIDS in the United States so far:
- 421,000 were from gay sex
- 240,000 were from intravenous drug use
- 136,000 were from heterosexual sex
No-one ever claimed that het sex was the leading infection vector in the USA, but even so, one out of eight American AIDS victims got it that way.

d) But America is just a drop in the bucket, worldwide.  The WHO estimates that somewhere between 34,000,000 and 46,000,000 people are currently infected.  That's not even counting everyone who is already dead.  5,000,000 of those were infected last year alone, mostly adults.  The primary infection vector worldwide continues to be unprotected heterosexual sex.  The WHO's latest figures for 2003 are available here.

That story about unsafe hospitals being a leading cause of infection in Africa is utter crap and is being circulated to try and avoid having to accept responsibility for the US foreign policy that withholds funding for U.N. family planning programs because condoms are an abomination before God or whatever.  As condoms were no longer available in third world countries, the HIV infection rates skyrocketed.  Please refer to the WHO's publication here, Expert group stresses that unsafe sex is primary mode of transmission of HIV in Africa

[El Gallo]

Alrindel, do they break those numbers down by gender?  It could be that most of the "I got AIDS from het sex" people are women.

[Disco Stu]

Alrindel, do they break those numbers down by gender?  It could be that most of the "I got AIDS from het sex" people are women.

Uh could you perhaps explain your reasoning behind that statement; for those of us who arn't doing heavy drugs.

[TheTick]

Eh, I think the reasoning goes 'a majority of AIDS patients who get AIDS from heterosexual contact are probably female, getting it from gay men who for some reason decide to sleep with a woman.'


If you ignore a whole mess of facts, you could make an argument for that, I guess...

B.

[Arydon]

I thought you could get AIDS from reading Savage Love.

[Alrindel]

Alrindel, do they break those numbers down by gender?  It could be that most of the "I got AIDS from het sex" people are women.

They do.  Of the 135,628 cases where "heterosexual contact" was the cause of infection, 50,793 were men and 84,835 were women.

[Romp]

Alrindel stop confusing the issue with facts :(

[Mediocre]

About 1/18th of all AIDS cases are heterosexual men -- out of 5 groups: heterosexual men, heterosexual women, homosexual men, homosexual women, and blood transfusions.

This means that if you're a hetero male, as most of us are, you're less likely to get it.

So fucking what?

These statistics are always brought up with an implicit political message -- that because AIDS happens to gays most of the time, we're either:

a) not supposed to spend as much on research for it since the average Republican male won't get it.
b) supposed to resent how the "elitist liberal media" is engaging in "fear mongering" by trying to scare straight people about AIDS when they probably won't get it.
c) trying to say gays are victims -- they usually claim this is to serve the "gay agenda", whatever the fuck that is.

There's always a political message when this discussion comes up. The reason the neocons don't speak it openly is because it's oftentimes full of shit -- and I say this as someone who may register Republican, for all I know.

The end result:  You're right in that you have a reduced chance of getting AIDS as a heterosexual male.  However, if this fact alone convinces you not to protect yourself, you're a moron -- since safe is generally better than sorry, lest you become a Darwin Award winner.

However, my question would be, what's the political insinuation the original poster was making about this info?

Odds are, nothing good.

[Shub]

c) trying to say gays are victims -- they usually claim this is to serve the "gay agenda", whatever the fuck that is.

The gay agenda includes, but is not limited to:

1. Gay marriage
2. "Protected class" status

Or have you forgotten http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37077">this and the attending hoo-hah?

[Dropkicktobucket]

Someone called me?  Oh haha, yes I see now.

It still goes to say that Africa's problem is tied up in a bunch of voodoo and societal ignorance.  Look no further than the belief that raping a virgin can cure HIV/AIDS.  While still controversal on how wide spread it really is, the fact that this would even enter the equation is beyond belief.

[Mediocre]

c) trying to say gays are victims -- they usually claim this is to serve the "gay agenda", whatever the fuck that is.

The gay agenda includes, but is not limited to:

1. Gay marriage
2. "Protected class" status

Or have you forgotten http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37077">this and the attending hoo-hah?

Ooh, ooh, I called it!

I figured, before I rolled over the link, that it was WorldNetDaily.  And, alas, it was.

Congratulations on your choice in fine and undescriminating journalism.  Saw their new magazine issue on newsstands the other day, proudly proclaiming Sean Hannity as "the next Reagan" for equating terrorism and despotism with liberalism.