The Relationship between the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (Draft)

DRAFT
(reviewed in Reinisch et al., 1990; Katz, 1992; Doll et al., 1990; Gilbert, 1980-81; Saghir et al.,
1973; Freidman and Downey, 1994). In the 1940's, Kinsey et al. reported that 37 percent of
all American males surveyed had at least some overt homosexual experience to the point of
orgasm between adolescence and old age, and that 10 percent of men were exclusively or
predominantly homosexual between the ages of 16 and 55 (Kinsey, 1948). More recent
surveys have found that 2 to 5 percent of men are homosexual or bisexual (reviewed in
Freidman and Downey, 1994; Seidman and Rieder, 1994; Laumann, 1994).
Sexual promiscuity was evident among homosexuals in the pre-AIDS era: a 1969
survey found that more than 40 percent of white homosexual males and one-third of black
homosexual males had at least 500 partners in their lifetime, and an additional one-fourth
reported between 100 and 500 partners (Bell and Weinberg, 1978). A majority of these men
reported that more than half their partners had been strangers before the sexual encounters
(Bell and Weinberg, 1978). Further evidence of extensive homosexual behavior in the years
preceding the AIDS epidemic comes from reports of numerous cases of rectal gonorrheal and
anal herpes simplex virus infections among men (Jeffries, 1956; Scott and Stone, 1966;
Pariser and Marino, 1970; Owen and Hill, 1972; British Cooperative Clinical Group, 1973;
Jacobs, 1976; Judson et al., 1977; Merino and Richards, 1977; McMillan and Young, 1978;
Quinn and Stamm, 1990)
Sexual promiscuity has never been limited to the homosexual population, as
demonstrated by rates of gonorrheal infections in the United States in the pre-AIDS era.
Cases of gonorrhea in the United States peaked at approximately one million in 1978;
between 250,000 and 530,000 cases were reported each year in the 1960s, approximately
250,000 cases each year in the 1950s, and between 175,000 and 380,000 cases annually in
the 1940s (CDC, I1987c, 1 993b).

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