LATEX LUNACY
By John Lauritsen
New York Native 2 July 1988
Events have gone beyond satire. On June 1, an American
company, Hemodynamics, Inc., announced that it would soon receive
the first shipment of a total of 18 million latex gloves from a
Malaysian corporation with which it had formed a joint venture.
Hemodynamics attributed the demand for the latex gloves to
concern over the "AIDS virus" and its impact on the health care
profession. Hemodynamics expects that the Malaysian latex
venture will add 10 million dollars to its revenues.
As much as anything, the so-called "AIDS epidemic" is an
epidemic of fear. The AIDS delusional system continues to
expand, and discourse becomes ever more irrational. And the
people who ought to provide rational leadership -- public health
officials and the medical establishment -- are themselves beating
the drums for mass hysteria.
I am fascinated by the role of latex in the AIDS plague.
There are, of course, legitimate medical uses for latex gloves.
But why now? Why should concern over the "AIDS virus" engender
such an urgently felt need for latex gloves?
A few weeks ago I visited a prisoner in the Special Medical
Unit of Trenton State Reformatory, a maximum security prison.
(The Special Medical Unit was established to house prisoners who
have been diagnosed as having AIDS, but are not in need of
immediate hospitalization.) After we had talked for a couple of
hours, time was up, and a guard knocked on the door of the
Visiting Room. As we walked out, the first thing I noticed were
the hands of the guard. He was wearing latex gloves. He looked
scared. But of what?
Latex gloves have acquired talismanic properties; they
symbolize protection against the evil virus -- akin to such
medieval charms as garlic flowers, crucifixes, amulets, or magic
gestures (the sign of the cross, the gesture to avert the evil
eye, etc.) Firemen and policemen have demanded that they be
issued latex gloves, in case they might, in the line of duty, be
required to touch a person with AIDS (PWA). Courtroom workers
recently demanded latex gloves in a case where a PWA was
scheduled to appear as a witness. Dentists and their assistants
have become obsessed with AIDS and latex gloves, although no
dentist has ever developed AIDS from working on a PWA.
Fear is not necessarily irrational. One may be faced with a
horrible reality. Yet a characteristic of irrational fear is
that it resists being articulated, resists being thought through.
To evaluate the rationality of AIDS fear among the general
population, and the appropriateness of latex gloves as a
preventive measure, it is necessary to address two issues: Is
AIDS truly an epidemic and is AIDS truly contagious?
Is AIDS truly an epidemic?
In terms of numbers, AIDS does not qualify as an epidemic.
In a decade, from 1978 to the present, there have been only
35,188 deaths in the United States from AIDS, out of a population
of 250 million. In a true epidemic, such as the influenza
epidemic of 1918, more people than that died in a day. In the
bubonic plague, one-third of the population of the entire world
died within the space of five years.
For further perspective, consider that, according to James
Mason of the Centers for Disease Control, about 1000 people in
the U.S. die every day from lung cancer, emphysema and other
illnesses acquired as a result of cigarette smoking. As many
people die from cigarette smoking in five weeks as have died from
AIDS in a decade. In a decade in the U.S. there are, on the
average, nearly ten million deaths from heart disease, and nearly
five million from cancer.
AIDS also fails to qualify as an epidemic because it does
not affect most of the population. AIDS is compartmentalized.
This is the central epidemiological puzzle, to which every
hypothesis on the cause of AIDS must address itself. Why, year
after year, has AIDS in the U.S. confined itself almost entirely
to two main "risk groups": homosexual/bisexual men and
intravenous drug users? Why hasn't AIDS begun to fan out into
non-IV-drug-using women and straight men? (Early last year
Surgeon General C. Everett Koop predicted that within a few
months AIDS would "explode" into the heterosexual population.
The explosion fizzled. Public health officials then had to admit
that for the foreseeable future, AIDS would remain in the same
risk group categories.)
Is AIDS truly contagious?
Of course a truly communicable disease does not remain
compartmentalized. The Kinsey studies established the fact that
a lot of bisexual activity takes place in the U.S.; if AIDS were
really a sexually transmitted disease, it would long ago have
spread beyond the gay male population.
The official line is that AIDS is an infectious disease,
caused by a retrovirus (HIV) which is spread from one person to
another through blood or semen. Gay men are said to become
"infected" through anal intercourse, and IV-drug users, through
the practice of sharing needles.
However, a compelling argument against the infectiousness of
AIDS is afforded by studies of needle-stick injuries. There are
now well over a thousand well-documented cases of health care
workers who accidentally stuck themselves with syringes that had
been used on AIDS patients. In no case has AIDS resulted from
one of these accidental inoculations, which are equivalent to the
"shared needles" blamed for causing AIDS in IV drug users.
(Actually, there is no evidence that all, or even most, of the IV
drug users with AIDS ever did share needles.)
Many tens of thousands of health care workers have had
contact with AIDS patients, and not a single one has developed
AIDS as a result of such contact. There is not a single
documented case of a household member who developed AIDS from
living with a PWA. And there are tens of thousands of sexual
partners of PWAs, who themselves remain perfectly healthy. In
short, AIDS is minimally contagious, if at all. Whatever
legitimate reasons there might be for wearing latex gloves,
protection from AIDS is not one of them.
Condom mania
Another form of latex, the condom, is being promoted as the
panacea for AIDS prevention, as the premier symbol of "Safe Sex".
AIDS groups, "gay leaders", church groups, public health
departments, colleges, and Surgeon General Koop have all joined
in the chorus of praise for condoms.
At Dartmouth, an official student group, RAID (Responsible
AIDS Information at Dartmouth), put on an exhibition of safe sex,
in which a male student held a plunger between his legs and a
female student slid a condom over the handle. Then students did
timed contests to see who could place condoms on dildoes the
fastest. RAID handed out Safe Sex kits to entering first-year
students and prepared its own Valentine gift package, a piece of
chocolate and a condom. This provoked Dartmouth journalist, W.R.
Grace, to comment: "I wouldn't advise purchasing a RAID Valentine
gift pack for your one true love. It's difficult to tell a woman
that you love her and then give her a condom so that you don't
catch her diseases." To which I would add that, in selecting
the women they want to be their wives and the mothers of their
children, most men don't look for proficiency in putting on
condoms.
It's easy to make fun of such heterosexual foibles. But
what really bothers me about the condom mania in the gay
community is the suspension of logic. Consider the following
propositions, the first representing the prevailing viewpoint
(from which I dissent), and the second, simple fact:
- AIDS is caused by a deadly virus, a single exposure to
which can result in infection leading to inevitable
death.
- Condoms, even when used conventionally (i.e., vaginal
intercourse) have a failure rate of about 10%. When
used for anal intercourse, they can break as often as
50% of the time.
If both propositions be true, having anal intercourse with a
condom is rather like Russian roulette, isn't it?
Conclusion
I am not saying that it is all right to have unsafe sex. On
the contrary, since from a scientific standpoint the cause or
causes of AIDS are unknown, it would be best to live in a healthy
and sensible way. This means avoiding promiscuity and forms of
sexual activity that are likely to transmit disease. Even more
important, it means eating well, getting enough rest and sleep,
getting enough exercise, and avoiding the use of "recreational
drugs" (including poppers, MDA, quaaludes, Eve, Ecstasy, ethyl
chloride, heroin, crack, cocaine, barbiturates, amphetamines, and
PCP).
As gay men, we have good reason to fear the fears of others.
We are in greater danger now from the political, than from the
biological manifestations of AIDS. *
References:
1. Reuter dispatch of June 1, 1988.
2. W.R. Grace, "Dr. Sloane, Dartmouth's AIDS Messiah", The
Dartmouth Review, February 17, 1988.