We Are All Living with HIV

I was saddened by Christopher McFadden's editorial "Quilts and the Moral Fabric" (Oct. 17). I respect his right to express his opinions, however much I may disagree with them, for as he says, dialogue is essential to progress. However, McFadden's depiction of AIDS as a homosexual disease troubled me; by now he should know that the epidemic is much more complicated than that.

McFadden claims that "aside from the handful of cases derived from using infected needles or blood transfusions, AIDS overwhelmingly is acquired through abnormal sexual behavior," an assertion which is no longer substantiated by the facts.

According to the CDC (http://www.cdcnac.org/hivtrend.html), intravenous drug use accounted for 26 percent of reported AIDS cases in 1995, hardly a handful. Heterosexual intercourse (what McFadden would call 'normal' sexual behavior) accounted for 11 percent of new cases, with a growth rate (in 1994) almost three times that of homosexual contact. And heterosexual women are accounting for ever larger numbers of those afflicted with HIV.

Fortunately, the rate of spread of AIDS in the United States has declined tremendously since the mid-1980s, due probably to intensive education programs targeted at the highest-risk groups; sadly, not everyone learned from this, as McFadden's piece and the elevated rates among heterosexuals indicate. The rest of the world has not been so lucky; new subtypes of HIV-1 in are erupting in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Thailand, spreading primarily among heterosexuals according to Monty Montano at the School of Public Health.

It is time that we realize that AIDS is not a homosexual problem, not a United States problem, not a developing countries problem, not an IV drug users' problem and not a "people with bad morals" problem. It is a problem. A human problem. We are all living with HIV. Scott A. Rifkin '97