stanwyck@ihuxr.UUCP (Don Stanwyck) (01/17/84)
The following is a quote of an entire article appearing in the 1/13/84
Chicago Tribune. It is reprinted without permission. It seems of interest to
all sexually active persons, so it is being posted to net.motss and net.women
in an attempt to catch all those who might be interested. Unfortunately
there is no net.men to post it to as well.......
HOMOSEXUALS MAY RISK WEAK IMMUNITY by Jon White
Practices common among homosexuals may weaken their immune system, creating
an abnormality seen in AIDS patients, a study published Friday in the Journal
of the American Medical Association suggested.
Another report in the Journal noted that 38 people have developed AIDS
following blood transfusions.
The study lends support to the theories mtying homosexual practices to a
breakdown in immunity that causes AIDS.
AIDS is aquired immunity deficiency syndrome, a condition in which a
person's normal body defenses against infection fail to function adaquately.
Patients with AIDS can become ill and die from infections that are easily
controlled by the immune systems of healthy people. AIDS patients may also
develop cancers rarely seen in the general population.
Since it was first seen by physicians in 1980, AIDS has been diagnosed
mostly in homosexual men, people who use intravenous drugs illegally, and,
to a lessor extent, Haitians and hemophiliacs. It has been noted that homo-
sexuals with a high number of partners seenm to beat greater risk of AIDS than
those with fewer partners.
The latest AIDS study, conducted at M. D. Anderson Hospital in Houston,
found that even in men without symptoms of disease, anal intercourse is
associated with abnormalities of the immune system.
The study, conducted by Dr. Giora mavligit and colleagues, focused on 30
asymptomic, monogamously paired homosexual men. Nineteen of 26 men who were
recipiants of sperm anally showed laboratory evidence of an immune response
to their partner's sperm.
No evidence of such a response was found in the four men in the study
who never received sperm during intercourse.
The response in some of the men involved infection fighters called T-cells
and was the same kind of reation strongly associated with AIDS. The
researchers also studied one heterosexual couple who regularly practice anal
intercourse and found signs of the same immune reaction in the female.
These findings support the theory that sperm entering the the anal canal
are readily absorbed into a person's lymphatic and blood circulation systems,
where they may set up an immune response as if they were invading infectious
agents.
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________
( ) Don Stanwyck
@( o o )@ 312-979-3062
( || ) Cornet-367-3062
( \__/ ) ihnp4!ihuxr!stanwyck
(______) Bell Labs @ Naperville, ILsdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) (01/18/84)
* * I cannot help but feel that there is a subtle "political" component in the AMA article linking certain sexual practices with laboratory immune deficiency disorders, and extrapolating that to the AIDS syndrome. A bit exaggerated, the argument goes as follows: "Subjects who participate in generally-considered-icky sexual practices show laboratory evidence of immune response to their partner's sperm. Did someone say 'immune'? Doesn't AIDS have to do with the immune system? Could it be that people who engage in such vile practices might actually be bringing it upon themselves? Hear ye, and repent now." It reminds me a bit of Susan Sontag's expositions of the treatment of tuberculosis and cancer patients in her book, "Illness as Metaphor". The chasm between labortatory-level immune system peculiarities and AIDS is quite wide, especially given the epidemiological evidence which would seem to implicate an infectious agent as the cause of AIDS. We must remember that the accused practice has been around for many millenia, as opposed to AIDS, which has emerged only in the last three years. A similar study was published a few years ago implicating vasectomies in auto-immune diseases. In this case, men were showing symptoms of immune reactions against their own sperm. Now the researchers (presumably themselves intact) weren't saying much about vasectomies and AIDS then, but they were warning of arthritis and heart disease. The fears stirred up by that potboiler are only beginning to be dispelled by hard evidence showing no increase in either disease in vasectomized men. I should emphasize that I am not condemning basic research of any kind. But a study's conclusions and presentations are not immune (sorry) to deeply-ingrained bias. Here, I'm trying to point out the ur-message I see hiding beneath the respectable mantle of an AMA article. -- /Steve Dyer decvax!bbncca!sdyer sdyer@bbncca