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From: flar@Eng.Sun.COM (Jim Graham)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Re: (2624) Not a high risk group?
Message-ID: <40232@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 17 Oct 90 01:35:18 GMT
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In article <40185@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, Hoffman.El_Segundo@xerox.com writes:

|> "Gay men", however defined do NOT constitute a risk group.  HIV is not
|> magically attracted to me because I am gay.  In fact, given my behavior,
|> I'm probably at lower risk than most non-gays.

This is like saying that because you do not engage in high-risk activities,
then gay men do not engage in high risk activities.

|> The only "risk group" relating to gay men that makes sense would be one
|> based on behavior, something like: "gay men who engage in unsafe sex".

Why don't we go all the way and say the only risk group are gay men who
are HIV+.  These are just further and further refinements which are harder
and harder to identify.

|> It's also a group even less quantifiable than "gay men" (again,
|> however you wish to define "gay").

The fact that it is less quantifiable makes it less useful as a guideline
in being able to follow the progress of the disease.

Basically, a "high risk group" is a group which is both describable and
which is also statistically harder hit by a disease than their relative
proportion to the general population.  Everybody in a high risk group
is not necessarily in danger, they just belong to a group that shows
up more in the statistics.

What Harvey seems to be stating is that the statistics which lead people
to consider that gay men are a high risk group are actually a comparison
of apples and oranges (because the definitions of gay men are different
between the two statistics that yield 10% men are gay and 70% AIDS patients
are gay).

|> And, of course, it is a group which has
|> diminished drastically in both absolute and relative size in the past
|> decade, thankfully.

This is supposedly due to the fact that it is a high risk group, no?

And, I wonder why you are thankful that gay men are dying?  Or did I
read you wrong?

					...jim