Russian Aids plague to hit Europe

Observer ^ | Sunday June 2, 2002 | Nick Paton Walsh

[sneakypete]

This means that the first wave of people will start arriving in hospital in three years.

They will for sure if they take AIDS drugs. (you)

There are already AIDS hospitals in Russia,and have been for at least 4-5 years. I met a woman who worked as a nurse at one when I was visiting there in 1998,and this wasn't even Moscow or St.Pete. It was a small providence about 600KM from Moscow.

[David Hunter]

The aids plague began with the gays and drug users. It has since spread to the heteosexual community. So, he is not wrong.

Actually, it originally came from Sub-Saharan Africa where it spread among heterosexuals. Also, one of the first people to be infected in California was an intra-venous drug abusing female prostitute. She infected several of her male clients and her husband.

However, AIDS did pass to heterosexuals through bisexuals, IV drug users and contaminated blood products, it also got into the US heterosexual population through heterosexuals who came from Haiti and Africa. American heterosexuals also contracted it abroad. Thus even if homosexuals had not had a high incidence of AIDS then it would still have got into the heterosexual population in the USA.

Stavka is wrong because AIDS first got into Russia in the early 1980s and it was brought in by a heterosexual Russian man who contracted it while he was working in the Congo in 1981. He infected his wife, who in turn infected their unborn child. At the Elista hospital syringes were used to take blood from the baby and they were then re-used on other patients, thus spreading the virus to other babies and their mothers.

Valentin Pokrovsky a Russian retrovirologist personally confirmed the child had AIDS. In the USSR the average syringe was used 100 times, often without adequate sterilisation. The baby was moved to another hospital in Volgograd where the same reuse of contaminated syringes caused more patients to become infected. This story was made public in the Russian trade union newspaper 'Trud' in 1989. Read about the incident on pages 500-501 of Laurie Garrett's 'The Coming Plague'.

Once the virus got into the heterosexual community then it could spread because people did not know they had it and did not use condoms.

[Stavka2]

Gee, thanks for putting words in my mouth...exactly when did I say that banning homosexuality would end AIDS? Please a quote.

[Stavka2]

David, as usual, I will ONCE AGAIN correct you...as usual...the Orthodox Church (we are not the CATHOLICS) does allow the use of birth control, since marriage is not souly for reproduction. Please, try researching a bit before sticking foot in mouth.

[Stavka2]

But the reason I said the above to Stavka is because he has told me HIV is mainly a problem for homosexuals and so they are a serious risk to the Russian population. Therefore, he proposes to ban homosexuality in Russia, ignoring the fact that sexual transmission of AIDS in many countries mainly occurs through heterosexual intercourse.

I just love how you put words in my mouth. If I said anything of the sort, it was in the context that AIDS spreads faster, as has been shown to be the case over and over, through the Gay Population because many choose a very high risk life style with dozens of partners...much more so then heterosexuals...as for AIDS being stopped by banning gays (which I stand for on a religious/moral principle) is plain stupid and I know for a fact, I would never say that. Try again.

[David Hunter]

Gee, thanks for putting words in my mouth...exactly when did I say that banning homosexuality would end AIDS? Please a quote.

This article you posted Russia moves to re-criminalise gay sex uses that argument. You didn't tell me that you disapproved of this argument when I challenged you about it, so obviously I had to assume you agreed with it.

[Stavka2]

And again, David, your credibility to be shot out of the water....But one of the new regions of greatest concern is eastern Europe, and Russia in particular, where experts predict more than a million people will be infected by HIV within two years.

And this from your own BBC. Is it possible for you to get even one statistic correct?

There are now almost 70,000 cases of full blown Aids registered with the National Aids Centre in Russia - compared to just over 5,500 last year Another quote for you. Though the article is from 2000 it estimates that (and these are the pessimistic estimates) by 2002 there will be 2 million infected.

It says: "In this era in which few young gay men have seen friends die of Aids, and some mistakenly view anti-retrovirals as a cure, there is growing complacency about the HIV risk..."

Here by the way is a quote on homosexual issues.

[Ahban]

You seem to know a lot about this. I have heard some reports that the strain of HIV common in America is not the same one that is common in Africa. The one in Africa kills at a much slower rate, but is easier to pass along through hetereosexual intercourse. The strain dominant in America is more virulent, but harder to spread- it almost always takes drug using or rump ranging activities to go from one person to another. Do you have any info on that theory?

[Stavka2]

To: David Hunter This argument you are putting forward about homosexuality spreading AIDS is just propaganda.

Where in the wild world of left field did this come from? Changing subjects from the previous discussion of crime? I'm not sure what the policies in schools are, I've been a grown man for a long time and I don't have any kids yet, so it doesn't really matter. But if you can afford a perservative, they are in most stores. Supply and demand. As for AIDS doubling and being such a massive out break, well when you've gone from zero to 100, that's a thousand percent increase. 100 to 200 is doubling. Look up the actual numbers and compare them to other countries. Do a statistical analysis and don't just jump at anyone screaming out "factoids".

59 posted on 5/19/02 11:15 AM Pacific by Stavka2 [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

Is this what you are using? Christ, you really are making one hell of a leap of faith and shoving words in my mouth. You sure you don't work for Labor?

[David Hunter]

It says: "In this era in which few young gay men have seen friends die of Aids, and some mistakenly view anti-retrovirals as a cure, there is growing complacency about the HIV risk..."

Right, so its time for a government AIDS publicity campaign, wouldn't you say? IV drug abusers, as cited in your BBC article, are the main reason the AIDS epidemic has accelerated in Russia.

...AIDS spreads faster, as has been shown to be the case over and over, through the Gay Population because many choose a very high risk life style with dozens of partners...much more so then heterosexuals...

That depends on whether or not they are using condoms. I've come across many heterosexuals who also have had dozens of partners, promiscuity is not limited to some homosexuals you know.

[David Hunter]

You seem to know a lot about this.

I should do, I have a PhD. in Microbiology.

I have heard some reports that the strain of HIV common in America is not the same one that is common in Africa.

Yes, there are several clades of HIV-1, and two distinct species of the virus: HIV-1 and HIV-2.

The HIV-1 clade D strain usually found in the lake Victoria region of Sub-Saharan Africa causes a more speedily progressing disease than the clade C virus commonly found in North America. The clade D virus can obviously spread by heterosexual intercourse because that's the main infection method in that area.

The one in Africa kills at a much slower rate, but is easier to pass along through hetereosexual intercourse.

HIV-2 usually causes a disease with a lower mortality rate than the AIDS caused by HIV-1, but HIV-2 is usually only found in North Africa. It is very rare outside Africa and is actually an SIV originally from sooty mangabey monkeys. HIV-1 is believed to be most closely related to another SIV called ANT-70 from chimpanzees.

[Freebird Forever]

Round them up

Send them to Siberia

Let nature take its course

[David Hunter]

Christ, you really are making one hell of a leap of faith and shoving words in my mouth.

You didn't say you disagreed with the article's assertion that AIDS could be tackled by banning homosexuality, even though I specifically challenged you about it.

[Stavka2]

So you assumed to just put words in my mouth from a none answer....very media like.

[David Hunter]

So you assumed to just put words in my mouth from a none answer....very media like.

Many of the people who posted on your thread supported this argument and you did not try to correct them.

Stavka, you must understand that as a Microbiologist, who has worked in a hospital and has done HIV ELISA tests on blood samples, I am irked by people who distort the truth about AIDS for their own selfish reasons. Plenty of religious people have seized on the AIDS epidemic as a justification to suggest banning homosexuality.

Personally, I am a libertarian and belief that persecuting someone for their sexual orientation is fundamentally wrong and violates the principle of minimal government intervention in people's lives.

Finally, there is currently an AIDS epidemic going on in Tyne and Wear (North East England) that affects heterosexuals and they aren't IVD abusers. Unfortunately, many younger heterosexual people are complacent about the risk of catching AIDS and so they don't use condoms. See this article for evidence of renewed complacency.

Blaming drug addicts and gays will only reinforce this complacent attitude in the minds of heterosexuals, just as it did in the early years of the epidemic in the USA. What is needed in Russia and many other coountries is a mass media AIDS prevention publicity campaign. Education not persecution is the solution.

[The Great Satan]

A quote from here: 'Numbers of heterosexually acquired HIV infections diagnosed in the UK have risen steadily over the last 15 years and since 1999 have been greater than the number acquired through sex between men. The total of new diagnoses of HIV in those infected heterosexually is expected to rise to over 1500 for 1999.'

"Most of those diagnosed in the UK who have acquired infection heterosexually were not infected in this country. More than three quarters are recorded as having acquired infection abroad with almost two thirds of the total in Africa."

From the graph and annotation above, it appears that annual deaths attributed to heterosexually-transmitted HIV deaths among native Brits is less than 25, and declining. This in a country with an annual mortality of about 750,000 -- i.e., it's about 0.003% of total mortality. That's assuming those deaths are really AIDS, and really heterosexually-transmitted -- since we're down among the noise here, the real value could well be zero.

Some epidemic.

[David Hunter]

Some epidemic.

Well, thank goodness, I say. The reason AIDS hasn't taken off in Britain is because the government coordinated a hard hitting nationwide mass-media AIDS publicity campaign in the 1980s. The Russians should take a leaf out of our book. However, there's no room for complacency since people can carry AIDS for years without knowing it and all the while be infecting others.

[David Hunter]

Also bear in mind that people dying now of AIDS were probably infected between 5 and 12 years ago, when less heterosexuals were being infected. The people contracting HIV today won't die for another 12 years, as long as they can tolerate the anti-retroviral drug treatments.

[David Hunter]

Health workers are also fiercely critical of the current HIV strategy. In Moscow, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is encouraging adults to abstain from sex rather than use condoms - a practice frowned on by Russia's Orthodox Church.

That's the passage from which I got the idea the Russian Orthodox Church doesn't approve of the use of condoms.

[The Great Satan]

However, there's no room for complacency

If heterosexual AIDS is killing less than 25 Britons a year and the number is declining, I really wouldn't worry about it. It's a big nothing.