[quote]ZEB wrote:
[…]There’s nothing better than when the politically correct left sees facts that do not align with their core, politically correct, beliefs.
These facts are fresh from the CDC web site:
“SM (men who have sex with men) account for nearly half of the more than one million people living with HIV in the U.S. (48%, or an estimated 532,000 total persons).”
Gee I wonder how that happened? It couldn’t be from having anal intercourse. Must be that they also belong to an every other wednesday night basketball league and the floors are filled with HIV, yea that’s it.
More politically incorrect, but factually accurate information from the CDC:
“MSM (men who have sex with men) account for more than half of all new HIV infections in the U.S. each year (53%, or an estimated 28,700 infections).”
“While CDC estimates that MSM (men who have sex with men) account for just 4 percent of the U.S. male population aged 13 and older, the rate of new HIV diagnoses among MSM in the U.S. is more than 44 times that of other men (range: 522â??989 per 100,000 MSM vs. 12 per 100,000 other men).”
“MSM (men who have sex with men) is the only risk group in the U.S. in which new HIV infections are increasing. While new infections have declined among both heterosexuals and injection drug users, the annual number of new HIV infections among MSM has been steadily increasing since the early 1990s.”
http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/FastFacts-MSM-FINAL508COMP.pdf
I know the above is not something you’ll find out watching “Will & Grace” or anywhere out of the mainstream liberal media. They want you to think that there is no danger at all from homosexual behavior. But darn those pesky facts, they just keep getting in the way of their dream world.[/quote]
No one disputes the figures - HIV hasn’t had the impact on the US as was originally feared, as it was pretty much contained in the original group from which the first patients came. Prevention and information have achieved what they could, and since the 90s basically the new infection rates have been stable, although they had to be corrected upwards as the original estimates were set too low.
What I dispute now is that the CDC proclaims causality between homosexual contact and HIV infection. That sounds counterintuitive at first, but let me explain: while there is an obvious correlation (historically easily explained) of a higher prevalence of HIV amongst MSM, the cause for higher new infection rates is given as risk behaviour - which in itself is independent of sexual orientation. Unprotected anal sex is as risky for heterosexual as for homosexual partners, as is intravenous drug use with needle sharing, etc.
The question that comes up now, is what tends to get people to display these risk behaviours - and here’s what’s interesting; and if you’d read a little bit further in your own source, you would have found factors that increase the risk:
- high prevalence: this is a no brainer - if a population has a high incidence already, it’s more likely to get infected; especially with a as long an incubation period as with HIV/AIDS; to summarise, there will always be a higher infection rate among MSM
- ignorance of HIV status: a HIV infection may lead to first symptoms more than 10 years later; many people don’t know their status as they don’t understand the concept or don’t have appropriate access to information
- complacency about risk: this is where the effectiveness of prevention and therapies really turn out to deliver a pyrrhic victory - people are a lot less concerned than they should be
- social discrimination and cultural issues: this is includes being surrounded by an environment that makes it harder to access prevention and health care measures due to their surroundings (the CDC explicitly mentions homophobia)
- substance abuse: not much to be added
Now let’s summarise this a bit - the above factors play a role in increasing risk factors, and this leads to a rather unsettling set of observations. Besides the first one, they all tend to be significantly more prevalent in poor segments of the population. Doesn’t seem relevant? Check this out: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/other/poverty.htm
They even have pretty cool poster which explains the significantly increased prevalence in US poverty areas, which are with regards to HIV infections on par with Ethiopia and Angola. If you now go for the same dataset used for the fact sheet you quoted (which I understand is the basis of mine as well), the significantly highest number of new infections occur among black people in the US. http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/incidence.htm
Does this happen because they are black? No, that’s correlation, not causation - it’s because the black population in the US tends to be significantly poorer than the white population, and this contributes (as above) to prevalence of risk behaviours. Following your own source again, at the bottom of page 2, there is an especially high infection rate of black young MSM, who don’t know their status (and have difficulty accessing appropriate health information). http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/FastFacts-MSM-FINAL508COMP.pdf
This is to illustrate what the CDC identifies as causation, and why its preventative measures tend to focus not on reducing homosexual behaviour, but risk behaviours - and to point out to the inequalities which promote them. It’s not - as has already been pointed out because it would be un-PC - but because this is where the real battle against HIV is fought. Not too dissimilar from the rest of the world, I dare say.
Do MSM engage in risk behaviours? Yes. Men in generally do so more than women, but what’s more important is that socio-economic and cultural factors play a huge role is excacerbating the risk behaviours which lead to these figures. The disease got into the US via the homosexual community - and it has thankfully not spread as far as it has if it went another route. But transmission is not caused by the homosexual nature of the contact - it is caused by risk behaviours which lie not in the sexual orientation, but in the environment which foster them. Blaming MSM for the spread of HIV in the US is shortsighted at best, negligent and dangerous at worst. The CDC recognises that, and makes its recommendations accordingly - which is why they never discourage homosexual contact per se - but focus on the risk behaviours. Anything else would be blaming the victims. Now I know this is easier, but also simply irrational.
Not so many hours on my part - just not enough people to do it.
Makkun
