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Reprinted from Scripps Howard News Service, January 22, 2004
AIDS Still Our PC Disease
By Michael Fumento
“AIDS cases increased by a total of 909 from the year
before. By coincidence, that's almost exactly the increase in the
number of male homosexual cases. So much for the never-ending prediction
that AIDS will still break out into the general population.”
===
"Repent of all your wicked AIDS statistics!" I don't often
get letters from the Inquisition demanding that I recant my heresies,
so I was rather bemused by a recent email that practically crackled
with flames.
Identifying himself as a third-year medical student and a prominent
member of the American Medical Student Association, the writer,
whom we'll call "Torquemada" after Tomás de Torquemada,
First Grand Inquisitor of Spain, said the AIDS articles on my website
"appalled" him. "Not only is your information and
citations [sic] over a decade outdated [sic] but the information
that you are taughting as the 'truth' is more than misleading; it
is . . . detrimental to health care prevention." (Taughting?)
"For the sake of the health of your 'followers,'" he declared,
"I deplore [he means implore] you to either reconsider your
statements regarding HIV/AIDS and update them to this century, or
simply remove them from your website altogether since I hope it
is clear to you now that the 'epidemic' of HIV/AIDS is returning
with new infections steadily on the rise with the decrease in prevention
funding thanks to our current administration."
Look Torquemada, I wish I had groupies but I don't. And what's clear
is that just as Ronald Reagan didn't cause the AIDS epidemic, as
many activists claimed, neither is President Bush responsible for
a relapse.
Herewith the most recent data as posted on the website of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. It confirms what I've written
about concerning the disease not just for the past ten years, but
since 1987.
For 2002, the last year for which data are available, AIDS cases
increased by a total of 909 from the year before with about 42,000
in 2002. By coincidence, that's almost exactly the increase in the
number of male homosexual cases. So much for the never-ending prediction
that AIDS will still "break out into the general population."
Overall, yearly cases have fluctuated only slightly since 1998.
Cases peaked a full decade ago at about 80,000.
AIDS deaths keep declining, with about 16,400 in 2002 compared to
about 17,400 a year earlier. Flu, in contrast, kills about 36,000
Americans yearly while cancer reaps about 550,000 of us. Pancreatic
cancer alone kills almost 14,000 more Americans each year than does
AIDS.
Pediatric AIDS cases are less than a tenth of what they once were.
I think that's great; but AIDS activists have never been keen on
good news. And after all, it was always the deaths of babies and
children like Ryan White that got the most attention and brought
the big bucks to AIDS programs.
Torquemada couldn't show that infections are increasing, since there
are no national infection data. Nor is there any proof that money
spent on prevention actually reduces new infections, especially
taxpayer-funded programs like the "Great Sex Workshop."
As the program advertises, "Get ready for some fun interactive
intimacy games to help you keep sex safe and hot! Then, share your
techniques for finding Mr. Right in this man-eat-man world."
It has a five-year, $5.5 million budget.
In any case, it's hard to believe there are still homosexuals in
this country who don't already know exactly how HIV is spread and
what activities are most dangerous.
If HIV infections among homosexual men are going up, blame it on
Magic Johnson being so darned healthy.
Ironically, if risky behavior among male homosexuals is increasing,
as it appears to be in certain cities, it would be because of what's
known as "The Magic Johnson Factor." As AIDS becomes more
of a manageable disease and less of a death sentence, as evidenced
by Magic looking no worse for the wear after more than a decade
of infection, homosexual men are increasingly willing to have risky
sex.
AIDS itself continues to be the same discriminatory, politically
incorrect disease it's always been.
Homosexual males and intravenous drug abusers remain grossly overrepresented
at 69 percent of all cases in 2002. Black and Hispanic cases combined
outnumbered those in whites by 2.5 to one, even though whites in
this country outnumber them by three to one.
In the category of those who claim to have gotten AIDS through heterosexual
transmission, black and Hispanic cases outnumber white ones by over
five to one. This is what I predicted in my 1990 book, The Myth
of Heterosexual AIDS, when I warned that putting all the emphasis
on white middle-class heterosexuals stole resources from those truly
at risk, leaving them not at the back of the bus but rather "the
back of a hearse."
As it happens, Torquemada later conceded he didn't even know the
CDC kept such statistics. He knew only the dictates of political
correctness, even as he wrote "I do NOT wish to make a medical
issue a political one."
Sure, Torquie ol' boy. Now get that torch away from the sticks bundled
around me before somebody gets hurt.
FAQ's
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