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. -- ________ ( ) Don Stanwyck @( o o )@ 312-979-3062 ( || ) Cornet-367-3062 ( \__/ ) ihnp4!ihuxr!stanwyck (______) Bell Labs @ Naperville, IL
sdyer@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
decot@cwruecmp.UUCP (Dave Decot) (01/25/84)
The following is not a professional immunologist's description of the current theory, but it is MY current theory. Please poke holes if you feel qualified. From the study in the JAMA article, there is reason to believe that sperm can trigger an immune response in the recipient when injected by anal intercourse. Through my limited exposure to reproductive biology (no giggling in the third row!), I seem to remember that, under regulation heterosexual intercourse, the woman's immune system is prevented from reacting to the invasion of the foreign sperm. This could be effected by a) a change in the woman's immune system during intercourse caused by i) hormonal reaction to psychological stress ii) some reaction to sperm chemistry, possibly accelerated antibody-antigen immunity? b) a characteristic of sperm (haploidy? chemistry?) that renders its genetic information "acceptable" to the female system. I believe that a combination of these mechanisms is responsible for the lack of immune activity. In any case, a vestigal "female system" of immunity to sperm may remain in men. Such an intended temporary suspension of immune activity may malfunction when the injection is through another site, i.e. the colon, particularly in men, and possibly in women. Another possibility is that the immune and hormonal changes that occur in response to fertilization may also have vestigal analogues in men, although I don't know what a male system would misconstrue as a "fertilization." The normal changes in women occur so that the zygote will not be rejected. Am I crazy or what? Dave Decot decvax!cwruecmp!decot (Decot.Case@rand-relay)