Darin Brown“BANGKOK (AFP) – Married people accounted for more than 40 percent of all new cases of HIV/AIDS in Thailand last year, the country’s health ministry said Thursday, despite an overall decrease in infections” (Google Alert, 12 October 2007).
“UN warns of Thai housewife HIV/AIDS crisis”, Apiradee Treerutkuarkul http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/21Aug2007_news12.php
“In Thailand, up to 40% of the 18,000 new cases found each year are housewives, which was previously identified as a low-risk group. . . . The number was high compared to so-called high-risk groups, such as men having sex with men (28%) and sex workers (10%)…. the situation has worsened in Papua New Guinea, where half of new AIDS cases are housewives. Housewives also account for at least 46% of all new cases in Cambodia”
“Press Release: Secretariat of The Pacific Community – SPC
SPC headquarters, Noumea, New Caledonia, Thursday May 31, 2007: Women are most at risk of contracting HIV from the men they should trust the most – their husbands….
This was the sobering message delivered to delegates at the 10th Triennial of Pacific Women, being held at Secretariat of the Pacific Community headquarters in New Caledonia.”
“‘Uganda: Rising HIV infection – where did we lose it?'”, by Dr. Chris Baryomunsi, New Vision (Kampala), 12 December 2006; http://allafrica.com/stories/200612130724.html
[Earlier, government programs had led to] significant behaviour change, especially among the young generation, by delaying sex, reducing the number of sexual partners, using condoms, testing for their HIV status and seeking improved health services. . . . The 2005 HIV survey by the Ministry of Health shows . . . married couples and rich women . . . to be at high risk.”
“‘Married couples top HIV infection rates in Uganda’, Kampala, 4 December 2006 (Xinhua);
http://www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-04 19:19:03
Apuuli Kihumuro, the director general of the Uganda AIDS Commission said . . . [that] between 1996 and 2005, 42 percent of the 130,000 HIV new infections occurred within wedlock. . . . [presumably] caused by unawareness of their HIV status, engaging in sex with multiple partners and their reluctance to use condoms. [Whereas] ‘The low rates of infection among the youth and unmarried people according to the findings are ascribed to their vigilance in having protected sex'”.
“New Vision (Kampala) 3 July 2007, reported by Fred Ouma
A detailed analysis of the 2004/05 Uganda HIV/AIDS Sero-Behaviourial Survey revealed the need to refocus HIV preventive measures to married people. . . . According to the survey, from an estimated 1.1 million Ugandans living with HIV/AIDS, married people were identified as the most risky group…. Contrary to the common perception that young people were at the greatest risk of HIV infection, the report shows an unprecedented shift, with 74% of new infection among people above 25 years of age. Only 10% of new infections were recorded among single people during the period of the study. New infections were highest (66%) among married, followed by 20% in widowed or divorced.”
” ‘A look at HIV – where are we now?’ Sabin Russell, San Francisco Chronicle, 13 August 2006;
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/13/MNGSNKHMRQ1.DTL
In India, for example, 80 percent of women infected with HIV are monogamous married women. ‘The fastest rates of infection are among housewives and young women, because the men who go to sex workers also go home'”
“For a growing number of women in rural Mexico – and around the world – marital sex represents their single greatest risk for HIV infection. . . . because marital infidelity by men is so deeply ingrained across many cultures . . . . These findings are published in the June 2007 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. . . . The article’s lead author, Jennifer S. Hirsch, PhD, associate professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, is principal investigator on a large comparative study showing that the inevitability of men’s infidelity in marriage is true across cultures. . . . in rural Mexico . . . in rural New Guinea and southeastern Nigeria” (http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/marital-sex-biggest-hiv-risk-women-around-world-13170.html)
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The greatest danger of contracting HIV, says the official wisdom, comes from having sex without condoms with someone in a high-risk group, namely, injecting drug abusers or highly promiscuous gay men. Yet at the same time, according to the above reports, it is married women who are the group at greatest risk of contracting HIV–“around the world”: India, Thailand, Cambodia in South-East Asia, Uganda and Nigeria in Africa, Mexico in the Americas, Papua New Guinea and the whole Pacific region . . .
If you can believe that, then you will also send money to Nigeria to someone you had never heard of before and who offers by e-mail to share with you a large unclaimed inheritance. Or perhaps you are already part owner of a Brooklyn Bridge.
These reports, absurdly unbelievable on their face, illustrate several features of the misguided notion that HIV causes AIDS:
- The media pass along, without further thought or critical comment, press releases from researchers and official institutions, no matter how contrary to plain common sense the “news” may be.
- Innumerable reported facts and statistics clearly show that HIV-positive is not the sign of a sexually transmitted agent.
- Not the media, not researchers, not official institutions, seem concerned to consider how reported findings could be consistent with the dogma of “HIV, the virus that causes AIDS”.
Would anyone believe it for even a moment, if it were claimed that married women in many parts of the world are at greater risk of contacting syphilis or gonorrhea or chlamydia, than are adolescents, or than are prostitutes (“sex workers”)? In Uganda, we are being asked to believe, the very same generation which as unmarried singles enabled the infection rate to decrease because of their scrupulously careful sexual behavior became, a few years later and when married, riotously and carelessly promiscuous. When it comes to “HIV/AIDS”, hysteria seems to trump thought every time.
Rather than accept such nonsense, one ought to recall certain established facts:
- Testing HIV positive does not prove infection by a human immunodeficiency virus.
- Testing HIV positive signifies only that a few proteins (or bits of genetic material) have been detected that are often found in people who are ill from any one of a large number of conditions, or who display a temporary reaction to a vaccination or a bout of flu, say (see posts of 12 and 16 November).
- In any given group, the probability that an “HIV-positive” reaction will follow exposure to a given health challenge varies according to individual physiology, which correlates with (among other things) age, sex, and race. In every tested group, the probability of testing HIV-positive varies in predictable fashion with age, sex, and race–see The Origins, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory.
The variation with age follows qualitatively this general scheme (from The Origins, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory):
This explains in quite straightforward fashion why married women and rich women are the most likely to be HIV-positive, followed by the widowed and the divorced, while the least likely to test HIV-positive are women under 25, adolescent women, and prostitutes: married women are on average of middle age, prostitutes and single women are on average younger, and the divorced and widowed who are likely on average to be beyond middle age.
The older women are, from teens into middle age, the more likely they are to be married; and as shown in the diagram, they are more likely to be HIV-positive; therefore married women are more likely to be HIV-positive than are single women. Beyond middle age, since widowed and divorced women are likely to be older than middle age, it follows again predictably that the widowed and divorced are less likely to be HIV-positive than married women. Women who are rich are likely to be older than those who are poor, since some will have acquired their wealth through marriage. And prostitutes (“sex workers”) are of course likely on average to be younger than married women.
That fits all the facts, and is vastly more plausible than the extent of unsafe promiscuity by husbands that the official view and explanation so readily assumes.
The absurdity of the official explanation is seen yet more starkly when one realizes how difficult it is to contract HIV through sexual intercourse: on average, the chance of becoming HIV-positive after unprotected sex with an HIV-positive person is about 1 in 1000; for citations to this fact in the published literature, see pp. 44 ff. in The Origins, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory.
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The following comment was submitted in error to the ”Re Comments” page, but it seems to belong here:
fraorlando Says:
Tuesday, 11 December 2007 at 2:13 pm e
nteresting. I cannot remember such a high number of infections in this group. If I understand you right, you claim that this is because of accumulated exposure to different immune stressors in married or middle-aged woman, so HIV is a factor of time and number of immune stressors; not an actual virus–but why is it that the same pattern hasn’t shown up in all other countries as well? Also, married woman are not necessarily elderly, maybe this is true in Western countries, where more educated women may marry in their late 20 to early 30’s on average, but I don’t believe in those countries described in your article, where marriage is more a matter of survival and other options are limited. Also, I assume that the curve in your diagram works for every other infectious disease, since, as time passes by, chances increase to get infected by one or the other pathogen–so I cannot see why this is an argument against the viral theory of AIDS?
On another front, though, it’s interesting that HIV does not seem to co-vary with other STDs. But also, diseases are very complex, so my question is if it can be reliably shown that, in epidemiological studies, there are co-variations between every other STDs, but not HIV?
Regards,
Roland
hhbauer responds:
Tuesday, 11 December 2007 at 2:56 pm e
Roland, thank you for insightful comments. I think you were responding to the post on “Getting Married” of 18 November?
My view is that HIV-positive may reflect any one of a large number of stresses, not necessarily an accumulation–see the diagram in “HIV TESTS, 16 November.
I don’t know how many countries would show this pattern, because there have never been truly population-wide studies done. Different countries and different researchers carry out tests for different reasons. All we can do is to try to interpret the data that happen to be available.
Certainly the age at which women get married can be very young in many of the countries from which these reports come. But on average they will stay married until death, whereas on average prostitutes tend to leave that profession before they are at the end of their lives. So married women on average will be older than prostitutes and, under my view, more likely to test HIV-positive at some time or other for some reason or other–especially pregnancy (HIV ABSURDITIES, 9 December).
I don’t believe that the age variation in that diagram is the same for other infectious diseases. As to STDs, adolescents and young adults are generally at highest risk; and certainly children below teenage are hardly at risk for STDs. Non-STD infectious diseases do not show a characteristic difference between males and females. So the fact that these variations of “HIV” show up in every group for which data are available, indicates that “HIV” is some non-specific physiological response.
I have a longer discussion in my book about differences between “HIV” and other STDs, including geographic variations. I don’t know about co-variation of STDs in general, I’m afraid.
HIV/AIDS Skepticism 