http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_fuel.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/genetics/
How 'homophobic' Are You? | Assault On Gay America | FRONTLINE | PBS (feel free to take this test)
"A federal study released Thursday showed the number of Americans who contract the AIDS virus through heterosexual sex remains stubbornly high showing no sign of dropping. Heterosexuals now account for about a third of HIV diagnoses with three-quarters of those being among African Americans.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention findings are an indication that the federal government’s war on AIDS may have stalled and that the disease could be poised for a resurgence after declining sharply for much of the 1990s. A total of 9,156 teenagers and adults were diagnosed in 2002 with HIV that resulted from heterosexual contact compared with 8,925 such cases in 1999, according to an analysis of 1999-2002 health data by the CDC. Heterosexuals made up 35 percent of the 101,877 HIV diagnoses included in the study.
The study found that blacks made up 74 percent of the 36,084 heterosexually-acquired HIV cases diagnosed between 1999 and 2002. Sixty-four percent of these new HIV infections were in women. The gender disparity was highest among teenage girls, who accounted for 89 percent of new heterosexually-acquired HIV diagnoses in the 13-19 age group, according to the CDC. Limited access to HIV prevention services and medical care as well as a lack of knowledge about the risks of contracting the virus were cited as factors likely contributing to the racial and gender disparities.
Since first being diagnosed in 1981, AIDS has killed about half a million Americans, most of them believed to be homosexuals and intravenous drug users, though people outside these high-risk groups are now on the rise with about 40,000 Americans contracting HIV each year. Much of the 80’s were spent by prominent leaders such as then Republican Senator Jesse Helms denying the disease posed any threat to heterosexuals. Even as late as 1988 Helms continued to lead the Republican fight against research and prevention funding citing that “there is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy.”
Just for fun: "At a House Appropriations hearing in 1969, the Defense Department’s Biological Warfare (BW) division requested funds to develop through gene-splicing a new disease that would both resist and break down a victim’s immune system. “Within the next 5 to 10 years it would probably be possible to make a new infective micro-organism which could differ in certain important respects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious diseases.” (See - A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare by R. Harris and J. Paxman, p 266, Hill and Wang, pubs.) The funds were approved.
AIDS appeared within the requested time frame, and has the exact characteristics specified.
In 1972, the World Health Organization published a similar proposal: “An attempt should be made to ascertain whether viruses can in fact exert selective effects on immune function, e.g., by …affecting T cell function as opposed to B cell function. The possibility should also be looked into that the immune response to the virus itself may be impaired if the infecting virus damages more or less selectively the cells responding to the viral antigens.” (Bulletin of the W.H.O., vol. 47, p 257- 274.) This is a clinical description of the function of the AIDS virus.
The incidence of AIDS infections in Africa coincides exactly with the locations of the W.H.O. smallpox vaccination program in the mid-1970’s (London Times, May 11, 1987). Some 14,000 Haitians then on UN secondment to Central Africa were also vaccinated in this campaign. Personnel actually conducting the vaccinations may have been completely unaware that the vaccine was anything other than what they were told."
http://dermatology.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/1994/501/16
"Over 36 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, and over 22 million people have died from AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic (1). The proportion of women living with HIV has risen steadily in recent years. Five years ago, 41% of HIV-positive adults were women; by 2000, that number had risen to 47% (2). In sub-Saharan Africa, where the primary mode of HIV transmission is heterosexual intercourse, 55% of HIV-positive adults are women (1).
The main HIV prevention tools–condoms, reducing the number of sexual partners, and treatment of reproductive tract infections–are not feasible for many women (3, 4). After 2 decades of male condom promotion, the absolute number of male condoms used worldwide has increased dramatically. However, consistent condom use remains difficult to achieve, and resistance to condom use in some settings, such as primary partnerships, remains high. Women often have limited ability to get their male partners to use condoms due to social, cultural, and economic gender inequalities. In some countries, the female condom has increased options for protection against HIV somewhat, but problems with long-term acceptability have been reported, and female condoms cannot be used without the cooperation of men (6, 7).
Reducing the number of sexual partners may not be feasible for those women who, because of limited educational and employment opportunities, are financially dependent on their male partners. Furthermore, a significant proportion of women are infected by their husbands. Even when women themselves are monogamous, their partners may not be.
Finally, women often are not treated for reproductive tract infections, or treatment is delayed. The majority of reproductive tract infections in women are asymptomatic, which makes women less likely to seek treatment and makes diagnosis difficult in the absence of laboratory testing (8). Although research on a preventive HIV vaccine is critically important and moving forward, it will be some time before a vaccine is available and accessible (9).
There is, therefore, an urgent need to extend the range of prevention methods available, particularly those that women can control. A microbicide is a product that is applied topically inside the vagina or rectum to prevent infection with HIV and potentially a number of bacterial and viral sexually transmitted infections (STIs). They may take any of a number of forms, including gels, creams, or suppositories, and may or may not be spermicidal. In the case of vaginal sex, microbicides are inserted by women and therefore only require passive acquiescence of men. Microbicides could be used alone, or in combination with a physical barrier, to provide increased protection or backup in case of barrier failure (10). For many women and couples, the importance of having children is a major obstacle to condom use, and noncontraceptive microbicides would give them an option with which to protect themselves from HIV while trying to conceive (11). By reducing the risk of HIV infection in women, microbicides would contribute to a reduction in mother-to-child transmission. They may also prevent transmission from women to their male partners and reinfection in women who are already HIV-positive. Additional research is investigating ways that microbicides can be formulated for use in the rectum during anal sex (12)."
For lorisco: "How the AIDS epidemic actually began, what the contributing factors were, and why it appeared in the mid- to late 20th century (and not before) are not known. Whatever the final answers are, they must account for (i) at least seven separate introductions of SIVcpz and SIVsm viruses into humans; (ii) the fact that the HIV-1 group M, N, and O viruses are significantly more closely related to SIVcpz viruses from P. t. troglodytes (the common chimpanzee) than to the single SIVcpz isolate from P. t. schweinfurthii (another kind of chimp); and (iii) the estimation of 1930 (range 1910 to 1950) as the timing of the last common ancestor of the HIV-1 group M viruses.
Two competing hypotheses have sought to explain the AIDS outbreaks. One, favored by our group, suggests that SIVcpz and SIVsm have been transmitted to humans as a result of cutaneous or mucous membrane exposure to infected animal blood (4). Among wild-living primates, biting and predation represent the most likely means of infection (17-19). In humans, direct exposure to animal blood and secretions as a result of hunting, butchering, or other activities (such as consumption of uncooked contaminated meat) provides a plausible explanation for the transmission of lentiviruses from primates to humans. Figure 4 is an example of the kind of exposure to animal blood regularly experienced by hunters and food handlers. There is precedent for direct blood and virus contact leading to human infection by HIV-1 and SIVsm in health care and primate center workers (38)" http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/287/5453/607?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=AIDS&searchid=1135268154894_6519&FIRSTINDEX=10&journalcode=sci#RF4
“Although sub-Saharan Africa remains the global epicenter, rates of infection have increased in recent times in the former Soviet Union and parts of south and southeast Asia, including India and China, where literally hundreds of millions of individuals are potentially at risk. In the United States, new waves of infection have been recognized in women, minorities,etc”(from the same article)
And this website seems to refute a few of ZEBs assertions. I find the irony fantastic.
http://traditionalvalues.org/urban/five.php
Okay, it’s a nice day so I’m going outside to play.
