AFRICAN PROMISCUITY MYTH DESTROYED
Rates of HIV infection have risen in the UK amongst homosexual men while other groups have seen a decrease, the latest HIV/AIDS statistics reveal. The figures were announced just before 1st December, World AIDS Day.
The rise confirms a trend which has seen cases of the HIV retrovirus amongst homosexuals rise for eight out of the last nine years. Meanwhile, a new study has destroyed the idea that promiscuity is to blame for AIDS in Africa .
After a trough in 1988 and 1989, possibly as a result of the Government’s ‘AIDS; we’re all doomed’ tombstone advertisements, HIV infections climbed to reach a high in the early nineties. But as AIDS deaths really started to increase in the same period, a decline in HIV infections in ‘men who have sex with men’ began from the peak year 
of 1991.
It was as if this highly-susceptible group had really begun to modify their sexual behaviour. Meanwhile, UK cases of HIV among heterosexuals kept creeping up, both in infections acquired in the UK and those acquired elsewhere in the world. The latter was some six times that of the former, but both were rising. Infections acquired from needles in drug use have remained fairly low, and reasonably stable, over the whole period. They decreased in the late 1980s and the 1990s, then show a slight but more erratic increase in more recent years.
‘LIVING WITH HIV’ BECOMES POSSIBLE
After the introduction of Highly-Active Anti-Retroviral Treatment (HAART) in 1995, deaths from AIDS began to decline, and people gained an idea that they could successfully live with HIV. Indeed, ‘living with HIV’ became almost fashionable in the homosexual network. The success of HAART was beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Deaths from AIDS halved from 1,494 in 1996 to just 755 in 1997.
This dramatic news was announced in 1998 with the release of the Government figures, and that is precisely the point at which HIV infections began to rise. As deaths from AIDS hovered around the 500 mark for the next ten years, HIV infections in homosexuals almost doubled, from 1,384 in 1998 to 2,679 in 2007. In only one year did they actually drop, by just 4% from 2005 to 2006.
Lord McColl of Dulwich, a noted surgeon, said in the House of Lords: ‘The free availability in the United Kingdom of highly active Anti-Retroviral therapy – HAART – has made some people complacent about HIV transmission and there is now a misconception that HIV can be easily treated.’ He warned: ‘There is still no cure. Treatment is complex and it is given for life.’ (L Hans Col 1169 3/04/08)
Amongst heterosexuals, the rise in HIV infections was even more pronounced, quadrupling from 1179 in 1968 to a staggering 4743 in 2004. The overwhelming majority – around 84% of these infections – were acquired abroad, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa . Almost exactly the same proportion of HIV infections in homosexual men were reported to be acquired in the UK .
Then, in 2004, the Government changed the rules on giving HIV and AIDS treatments to asylum seekers, depriving them of HAART treatment. The Government say there is ‘no evidence’ of HIV tourism, but in every year after 2004, HIV in heterosexuals has declined, down to 3604 in 2007, while the proportion of UK-infected heterosexuals has grown to be a larger proportion of the heterosexual group. The 2007 figures showed UK infections to be 28% as the overseas contingent continued to wane.
A BLOOD-BORNE DISEASE
The precise method of contracting HIV has been a matter of fierce public debate, with the British Government desperate to downplay any suggestion that the abusive practices of homosexuals, sodomy in particular, are more likely to put those involved at greater risk. It is good, from their point of view, if HIV/AIDS is a sexually-transmitted disease which can easily be caught during normal sexual intercourse rather than a blood-borne disease which needs direct entry into the blood-stream through more specialised practices. The passage of AIDS to haemophiliacs through infected blood and to drug-users through shared infected needles strongly indicated the latter, which was inconvenient.
Oddly enough, although researchers ask for and record the sexual practice to which homosexual men attribute their HIV infection, they do not ask heterosexuals the same question. No-one knows what proportion of the latter group have contracted HIV by sodomy.
Since the earliest days, the homosexual lobby, aided by governments both sides of the Atlantic , have been keen to stress gay victimhood while avoiding the issue of gay responsibility. As Baroness Thornton told the House of Lords in April, ‘Gay men continue to be the group that is most at risk of HIV transmission in the UK’, (L Hans Col 1172 3/04/08) a comment echoed by the homosexual AIDS charity the Terrence Higgins Trust.
The prevalence of HIV and AIDS in the whole population in Africa has enabled homosexual AIDS lobbyists to claim that HIV/AIDS is spread ‘heterosexually’ in the rest of the world. In the early days it was the epidemiology establishment’s view that whole populations in the western world were at risk of an AIDS epidemic. When that failed to occur, they had to come up with reasons why HIV and AIDS were prevalent universally in the rest of the world – especially Africa – but tended to affect more specialised groups in the West.
AFRICANS ACCUSED OF PROMISCUITY
What they came up with would have been denounced as racist in any other context. However it is dressed up, it boils down to this: Black Africans are vastly more promiscuous than us civilised white folks. A paper published in the British Medical Journal in 2002 by Peter R Lamptey, President of the Family Health International AIDS Institute simply assumes HIV to be transmitted heterosexually and identifies, to his own satisfaction at any rate, the following ‘key factors in the heterosexual transmission of HIV’:
- Frequent change of sexual partners
- Unprotected sexual intercourse
- Presence of sexually transmitted infections and poor access to treatment
- Lack of male circumcision
- Social vulnerability of women and young people
- Economic and political instability of the community
Top of the list is promiscuity, second is a call for more condoms. The ‘factor’ of ‘frequent change of sexual partners’ is not defended, it is just declared. It is actually quite disgraceful to claim that Africans change their sexual partners ‘frequently’, compared with people in the USA , for example. The family is a much stronger institution in Africa than in the decadent west.
Lamptey singles out Botswana and speaks of ‘the disproportionate death rate among the young, sexually active, and productive segments of the population’. It is true, as he says, that ‘large numbers of young children and older adults will have to be supported by a shrinking proportion of productive adults’, but why the emphasis on ‘sexually active’? It is to reinforce his idea that rampant promiscuity in Botswana is the prime cause of HIV and AIDS.
STUDY DESTROYS MYTH OF AFRICAN PROMISCUITY
Thankfully, by the grace of God and in His timing, a study published in the United States , just days after the release of the UK statistics, has shown that this explanation for HIV infections amongst heterosexuals in Africa, that promiscuity is higher than in Europe and the USA , is totally false.
The research, carried out by Professor David P Schmitt, destroys the idea that black Africans are orders of magnitude more promiscuous than white people in the developed world. On the contrary, it shows that levels of illicit sexual activity in the four African countries considered are around half those in the Western/Northern Hemisphere. This will come as no surprise to anyone with more than a passing knowledge of African culture.
The United Kingdom had the dubious distinction of coming top of the OECD countries, with a ‘sociosexuality’ rating of 40.17. The USA scored 37.05, Germany 39.68 and France 36.67. Every country with a higher score than that of the UK , from Argentina with 40.74 to Finland , which scored a Bloomsbury-set-challenging 50.5, was white, or of white extraction.
The African countries scored much lower, led by Zimbabwe with 22.66. Botswana , the country singled out by Dr Lamptey, came in with 27.02. Ethiopia scored 26.55 and even the Democratic Republic of Congo, plagued by civil war, and widely regarded as a hot-bed of rape and fornication, was only 32.43, less than the world average. The lowest score was from Taiwan with 19.22, closely followed by Bangladesh with 19.67 and South Korea with 22.21. Zimbabwe was fourth-lowest.
The survey was carried out by interviewing over 14,000 people across 48 countries, and gives the first-ever scientific over-view of sexual-moral attitudes and practice. It is devastating for the homosexual lobby, who will have to come up with another reason why AIDS affects the whole population in Africa . Clearly, the fact that HIV is being contracted by heterosexuals here and in Africa does not mean the infection is acquired through sexual intercourse. If HIV was transmitted by sexual intercourse, the UK , with promiscuity levels almost twice those found in Africa , would be facing an HIV epidemic. We are not.
Dr Lamptey could be closer to the mark with his third point, that any ‘presence of sexually transmitted infections’ coupled with ‘poor access to treatment’ means that open sores could allow the transmission of HIV through sexual intercourse. That directs us to look at medical treatment in Africa , the subject of a BBC Panorama programme in November 2008.
Reporter Sorious Samura found that the Ugandan Ministry of Health bought 1,800 4x4s for its administrators but only 4 ambulances for Mulago hospital. British Aid helped build a hospital where there is now no money for gloves or needles. In Britain , STD’s are treated and running sores are very uncommon. That is not the case in Africa , and those sores or ‘lesions’ allow the virus access to the blood-stream.
Poor health-care was also blamed in a paper in the International Journal of STD & AIDS by David Gisselquist and others published in 2002. Gisselquist et al observe that HIV infections in Africa are not totally explained by sexual transmission. On the contrary, up to 40% of HIV infections in African adults may be associated with injections. ‘Differences in epidemic trajectories across Africa do not correspond with differences in sexual behaviour,’ the authors say, before raising ‘the possibility that HIV transmission through unsafe medical care may be an important factor in Africa ‘s HIV epidemic.’ (Int J STD AIDS 2002; 13:657-666)
HAART TREATMENT EXPENSIVE
Meanwhile, as the recession begins to bite, health managers in the UK are facing hard choices on the allocation of dwindling financial resources. Some, for example on the South Coast , are having to restrict funds for HIV treatment and care. The HAART regime costs £16,000 per patient per year. That means that someone living an extra 20 years will cost the Exchequer £320,000, or just about a third of a million pounds.
HAART treatment is now said to be costing between £400m and £half-a-billion annually. That may be an underestimate as 80,000 people in the UK are living with HIV and their numbers are currently being swelled by 6,000 net per year (around 6,500 new diagnoses less 500 AIDS deaths). 80,000 lots of £16,000 would be £1,280,000,000, or almost £1.3 billion.
The treatment and its free availability through the NHS have clearly led to the complacency that Lord McColl described. Ron Christie, of Tayside Body Positive, a homosexual HIV group, says homosexuals have ‘become blasé’ about the use of condoms. There is much evidence that a greater proportion of homosexuals are not bothering to use them with partners of different or unknown HIV status – as many as 30% a year in hotspots like London, Manchester and Brighton.
It would be tempting to say that those who have brought HIV upon themselves in such a way should pay for their treatment, but where would that principle leave smokers, or the obese, or the youth who crashes while driving too fast, or the man who irresponsibly over-reaches on a ladder? Will hospital trust managers employ private detectives to investigate how people came by their conditions or injuries? That defies the founding principle of the NHS.
Another response might be to pour yet more money into ‘safer sex’ campaigns. But those involved in the homosexual network clearly know the message, but have simply concluded they can live with HIV if they catch it. There is also evidence that some homosexuals regard HIV-positive status as a badge of honour, although those who are widely thought to ‘chase’ the bug have proved elusive.
TACKLE HIV INFECTION AT SOURCE
Perhaps it is time to tackle the problem of HIV infection at source through the criminal law. There have been a handful of successful prosecutions for ‘recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm’ through the transmission of HIV. Buggery against both men and women was totally decriminalised in 1994. As the single biggest undisputed known route of HIV infection, such a practice is not just morally repugnant but physically dangerous and financially demanding. If it were again to become a criminal offence, such a law could save lives and relieve the strain on the hard-pressed NHS. It would then be possible for Government, in a joined-up way, to dissuade people from engaging in sodomy.
A nation can live with decadence for a while, but it grows ever more expensive. HIV tourism can be dealt with at a fiscal level. But for home-grown HIV infections, the abusive practice most associated with homosexuality needs to be discouraged at every level. Sodomy is a luxury we can no longer afford.
