=============================================================== The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070 =============================================================== Human Events * May 24, 1996 For 10 Years, Federal Government Has Lied to the American People WHO, REALLY, IS AT RISK OF ACQUIRING AIDS? By Maggie Gallagher So far, AIDS has killed more than 300,000 Americans. Why, after so much time and money, are so many still dying? One reason, according to a damning Wall Street Journal report, is this: For 10 years, the government has been deliberately lying to us about who is at risk of AIDS. As early as 1987, Centers for Disease Control officials knew that AIDS was likely to remain a disease of gay men and inner-city drug users. Yet the same year, the nation's public health officials embarked on a deliberate public-relations campaign to mislead the American people into thinking that AIDS was spreading inexorably into the mainstream. SLEAZY CDC CAMPAIGN MISSTATES RISK OF AIDS Remember those TV ads featuring the Baptist minister's son, who said, "If I can get AIDS, anyone can"? Turns out he was gay. Remember the brochures featuring a blond, middle-aged woman with AIDS? She was an intravenous drug user. Surveys show that, after the PR campaign was in full swing, the percentage of Americans who thought it "likely" AIDS would become a full scale epidemic leaped from 51% to 69%. By 1991, most agreed that married people who had an occasional affair had a substantial risk of getting AIDS. In reality, the government's own research showed that the risk of getting AIDS from one act of heterosexual intercourse was less than the chance of getting hit by lightening. This was the conclusion that Michael Fumento reached years ago in his book The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, for which he was unjustly and shamefully reviled. Even more remarkable, these government officials now publicly defend their deceit. "We wanted to reduce the stigma," acknowledges a CDC official. "As long as this was seen as a gay disease,...that pushed the disease way down the ladder of people's priorities," admitted another. DELIBERATELY FRIGHTENING AND DECEIVING TAXPAYERS What astonishing bureaucratic hubris! The first and most obvious victims of the government's lies are the 40,000 or so Americans who this year will become HIV-positive, overwhelmingly gay men or poor, inner-city drug users and their sexual partners. According to one model by epidemiologist James G. Kahn, each dollar spent on high-risk populations prevents 50 to 70 times as many new infections as the same money spread out among low-risk groups. Yet, of the almost $600 million the federal government spends on AIDS prevention, probably less than 10% is spent on high-risk groups. If Kahn's model is correct, redirecting the $540 million now wasted on spreading the myth of heterosexual AIDS to high-risk groups - mostly gays and inner-city drug users - could wipe out new infections entirely. The CDC knows the truth. Yet this year, its education program, "Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself" is once again aimed at the general population. Indeed, according to the Wall Street Journal, "A current focus of the campaign is to discourage premarital sex among heterosexuals." The ultimate casualty of the CDCs lies will be Americans' faith in public- health officials, heretofore generally exempt from our growing distrust in government. Yet public health officials, afraid they couldn't honestly generate support, deliberately frightened and deceived American taxpayers to get them to cough up the dough. In private life, this would be known as fraud - not only a serious sin, but a crime. In Washington, D.C., judging from the ease and even pride with which public health officials now confess their wrongdoing, it's business as usual. [end] Source: Human Events, p.17 May 24, 1996 Subscription: 1-800-787-7557