Note: Unpublished letter to the editor of The Australian. (December 1997)

HAS SWEET VIRGINIA BEEN CRYING WOLF?

The "proof" that HIV/AIDS is heterosexually transmitted is based on fuzzy, epidemiological, statistical associations involving antibodies of unproven specificity confounded by the fact that people who sleep together often share more in life than just their bodies. Last month Dr. Nancy Padian and her colleagues from the USA presented data from the largest and longest study ever performed These data reveal that on average, a male would need to have sex 9000 times with his HIV positive partner in order to become infected. That's sex with the same woman once every day for twenty five years. (Believe me, it's harder than you think and published data suggest that once a week is still more than average. And that means about 200 years to become infected). By contrast, just three times, maybe one night, would suffice to catch gonorrhoea. The trouble is, even the fastidious Padian admits her inability to exclude "misclassification" because so many humans are loathe to confess to behaviours such as illicit drug use (this year in Chicago 85% of 395 heterosexual cases had to be "reclassified"). Incredibly, the 1/9,000 estimate is based on only two men in ten years who developed the so called "HIV" antibodies allegedly at the behest of their "infected" female partners. Extraordinarily, Padian concedes both these cases suspect. In one couple genital bleeding was frequent (exposure to "non-HIV" infected blood may cause "HIV" antibodies) and the female had a proclivity to sexual intercourse while semen of unknown quality from another man remained fresh in her vagina. In the second couple the man became infected with a common STD at the same time as becoming HIV positive ("non-HIV" antibodies react in HIV tests). Thus, unless there really are two swallows, and that is sufficient to make a summer, the very best data available (but a far cry from the standard of proof employed for the established STDs) reveal no evidence that HIV is ever sexually transmitted from women to men. How then is it possible to generate and sustain the reservoir of men needed to infect the women? Indeed, since there are ample data that the insertive gay man is free from risk, how can one even entertain the notion of a sexually transmitted agent as the cause of AIDS? *

Dr. Valendar F. Turner

References

Padian NS et al. Heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Northern California: Results from a ten-year study. American Journal of Epidemiology. 1997; 146: 350-357.

Murphy JT et al. Redefining the growth of the heterosexual HIV/AIDS epidemic in Chicago. Journal of the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndromes and Human Retroviruses. 1997 16: 122-126.