Item #47: Does HIV Spread Randomly? Should it?

no one has ever demonstrated how a sexually transmitted virus can manage to restrict itself overwhelmingly to gay men and other AIDS risk groups instead of spreading randomly through the population, as do all other infectious diseases.

Farber states that all infectious diseases spread randomly through the population, but HIV does not.

HIV is primarily sexually transmitted and sexually transmitted infections do not spread randomly through the population. Sexually transmitted infections consistently target people who have more partners, use condoms less frequently, and visit sex workers.

There are numerous anomalies with the theory that HIV is sexually transmitted, and that its occurrence reflects sexual risk factors, including:

• Four women became HIV-positive through artifical insemination by a HIV-positive donor. Despite unprotected intercourse over a subsequent three-year period, none of their husbands became antibody positive to HIV (Stewart 1985).
• After an average of 3 1/2 years of unprotected intercourse, with an average of 50 sexual encounters per year, only one hemophiliac wife out of 14 became HIV positive; but she had been intermittently treated with immunosuppressants because of multiple sclerosis, so even this one case is doubtful evidence of HIV transmission [Kim 1988 Kim H. C., Raska K. III, Clemow L., Eisele J., Matts L., Saidi P., Raska K. Jr. Human immunodeficiency virus infection in sexually active wives of infected hemophiliac men. American Joournal of Medicine, 85 (1988) 472--476.]
• Transmission has been estimated to occur on the order of 1 per 1000 acts of intercourse, [Royce 1997 Royce R. A., Sena A., Cates W. Jr. & Cohen M. S. Sexual transmission of HIV. New England Journal of Medicine, 336 (1997) 1072--1078.] or, more precisely, 0.8--1 per 1000 [Wiley 1989 Wiley J. A., Herschkorn S. J. & Padian N. S. Heterogeneity in the probability of HIV-1 transmission per sexual contact: The case of male-to-female transmission in penile-vaginal intercourse. Statistics in Medicine, 8 (1989) 93--102; cited in Chakraborty 2001.] or 0.5--2.3. [Peterman 1988 Peterman T. A., Stonebumer R. L., Allen J. R., Jaffe H. W. & Curran J. W. Risk of human immunodeficiency virus transmission from heterosexual adults with transfusion-associated infections. Journal of the American Medical Association, 259 (1988) 55–58; cited in Chakraborty 2001.]
• In a 10-year study, [Padian 1997 Padian N. S., Shiboski S. C., Glass S. O., & Vittinghoff E. Heterosexual transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in Northern California: Results from a ten-year study. American Journal of Epidemiology, 146 (1997) 350--357] rather less than 1 per 1000 for male-to-female transmission (0.0009 was the actual figure) and much less than that (0.00011) for female-to-male transmission. Not one seroconversion occurred (i.e. partner of HIV+ person become positive themself) throughout the entire study period.