Editorial: Myths & Misconceptions About AIDS

SF CHRONICLE EDITORIAL -- Many myths and misconceptions about the AIDS pandemic are spread by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and other mainstream AIDS agencies and activists, either unintentionally out of ignorance or intentionally by distortion or exaggeration, including fear of a generalized epidemic.

UNAIDS continues to perpetuate the fallacy that only aggressive HIV/AIDS prevention programs -- especially directed at youth -- can prevent the eruption of heterosexual HIV epidemics where prevalence is currently low. More than two decades of observation and analysis point to far different conclusions -- there are no "next waves" of HIV epidemics just around the corner and the AIDS pandemic is now in its post-epidemic phase.

The highest HIV infection rates are found in many sub-Saharan African populations because up to 40 percent of adolescent and adult males and females in these populations routinely have multiple and concurrent sex partners, and they also have the highest prevalence of factors that can greatly facilitate sexual HIV transmission. In most other heterosexual populations, the patterns and frequency of sex-partner exchanges are not sufficient to sustain epidemic sexual HIV transmission.

UNAIDS and most AIDS activists reject this analysis as socially and politically incorrect, saying it further stigmatizes groups, such as injecting drug users, sex workers and men who have sex with men. However, all available epidemiologic data show that only the highest risk sexual behavior (multiple, concurrent and a high frequency of changing partners) drives HIV epidemics among heterosexuals or men who have sex with men, anywhere in the world...

READ THE FULL EDITORIAL AT SFGate.com