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From: GERRI@IBM.COM (Gerri Oppedisano)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Not a high risk group?
Message-ID: <40152@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 15 Oct 90 17:29:45 GMT
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Approved: phil@wubios.wustl.edu
Note:	Copyright 1990 by Daniel R. Greening.  Permission granted for
Note:	non-commercial reproduction.
Archive-number: 2628

>  1.  About 70% of the population has had a homosexual experience.
>  2.  One would expect about 70% of the AIDS patients to have had a
>     homosexual experience by random chance.
>  3.  Actually, about 70% of the AIDS patients have had a homosexual
>      experience.
>  4.  Therefore, those having homosexual experiences account for no more
>      AIDS cases than would be statistically expected.  This means that they
>      do not have a higher rate than persons not having a homosexual
>      experience.
>
> Does this make since, or is there a major flaw in my logic.  I realize that
> the exact percentages vary over time, but are roughly as I reported.  Any
> comments would be appreciated.

I think the significance of understanding "high risk behavior" brought about
the phrase to begin with. A "homosexual experience" to me sounds too vague.
Getting excited watching your friend of the same sex undress when you were
both 13 years old might be considered a homosexual experience to the person
who went through it. If two people of the same sex experimented by fondling
each other and hugging that might be considered a homosexual experience but
it wasn't high risk behavior. Further, people reading the statistics based on
homosexual experiences will not know how to interpret the data. The only way to
interpret that kind of data is to have clearly defined what's considered the
risk behavior in homosexual experiences. Also, the point in identifying the
risk behaviors is to clear up the idea that if you're not gay and you do this
you're safe. I'm not against defining, based on statistics gathered about high
risk behavior, what groups of people tend to be considered at the highest
risk and why (very important). I do agree it's important to know what
patterns were found in statistical data collected (like there's a high
percentage of homosexual males living in Manhattan who engage in high risk
behavior and who've tested HIV+, .. , of the people testing HIV+, some high
percentage of them live in cities). Anyway, perhaps it is true that the 10%
is not a good representation of that group of people at risk. There should be
another percentage based on homosexual activities (bi-sexuals are not
exclusively homosexual.. are they included in the 10% ? ).

gerri