VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE

FIGHTING THE HIV PARTY LINE
The Gay Community Like the Straight One Offers Little Solace for Non-Conformists

By Nicholas Regush

ABCNews.com 22 March 2000

It's a little past midnight and I'm reading e-mail I have received from readers of this column. Some of the letters have me thinking about people who have intimately expressed their fears about how their medical nonconformity is causing them great pain.

One letter from a middle-aged gay man living on the West Coast is tugging at my emotions. He doesn't know me but still he writes about what hurts him the most these days -- being ostracized from his own "community" for questioning the value of drugs being used to fight HIV.

He informs me that conversations he's had with people who have been diagnosed with HIV but have chosen not to take AIDS drugs, such as the protease inhibitors and the chain terminators, are often conducted in "hushed tones."

Used to Keeping Quiet

He says so much pressure exists in the gay community to go on these drug "cocktails" that many gay men who have been HIV positive for years actually conceal the fact that they are not on medication and not getting sick. Gay men, he says, are well acquainted with hiding aspects of self from a world that still demonizes them. They are used to evading the truth and denying their experience in public forums.

His letter to me arrived after I had written a column questioning the science underlying the wide prescription of these cocktails, particularly to people who are HIV positive but remain free of AIDS symptoms.

Others have sent similar letters about how the gay community, to which they normally turn for support about being homosexual but which has been intolerant to critical views about the AIDS party line. Challengers question the cocktails and doubt whether HIV is the sole factor in AIDS or, in fact, if it is the actual cause of AIDS.

"I have a lot of empathy for my community but have to keep myself at arms length from it in order to survive," writes the man to me.

Intolerance Pervasive Among Gays

The rule of intolerance and party-line preoccupation in both the gay and straight cultures never surprises me. Why should the non-conformist be treated any different in the gay community? Am I surprised the gay press is feasting on drug-company advertising for drug cocktails? Am I surprised that certain individuals have filled the power vacuum and pretend they speak for the entire gay community? Am I surprised that self-appointed AIDS "experts" have arisen from the gay community and attempt to trash any opposition to their view? No, I'm not.

The letters I receive from gay men who are concerned about censorship in their own community may be the tip of the iceberg. I don't claim to know this community well and therefore do not know how widespread this feeling runs. But enough of these concerns reach me to make me wonder just how much of the gay community has become co-opted by AIDS "business" interests. Why should this community be any different? I raise this as an open question to which readers can thoughtfully respond.

In the larger society, as I have stated in recent columns, there is a strong sign of a building medical autocracy with the stench of intolerance overpowering the need for open debate on many medical issues, including the cause and treatment of AIDS.

Grown-ups who call themselves scientists often write to me in hysterics when their views are challenged. You would be amazed to see some of the hateful material I read in my e-mail in the early hours of the morning.

Fear really is the mind killer. Fear of losing one's freedom of expression. Fear of losing out on the goodies that a co-opted life can provide. You don't have to look far these days to find fear.

To the gay men who confided in me, thank you for the education.

Nicholas Regush produces medical features for ABCNEWS. In his weekly column, published Wednesdays, he looks at medical trouble spots, heralds innovative achievements and analyzes health trends that may greatly influence our lives. His latest book is The Virus Within.

VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE