Document:Policital Economy of Incidence

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1989
[revised 1990]

Controversies have been raging over the incidence of "AIDS" – whether the "epidemic" has been exaggerated, whether it is peaking, and whether it is spreading beyond the major "risk groups". Some of the participants in these debates have been Michael Fumento writing in the American Spectator, Joe Queenan writing in Forbes Magazine, ACT UP of New York, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the United States General Accounting Office (GAO), The New York Times, Richard Dunne of Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), Stephen Joseph of the New York City Department of Health, Edward Brecher writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, and myself writing in the New York Native.

Merely a decade ago there was no "AIDS" – at least the label had not been formulated and marketed – and there was no AIDS Industry. Now "AIDS" is big business, and many hundreds of millions of dollars ride upon the question of whether the incidence of "AIDS" is going up or down. ^[1]

The American Spectator, Forbes Magazine and ACT UP

The May 1989 issue of The American Spectator contains an article by the conservative writer Michael Fumento, entitled "The Incredible Shrinking AIDS Epidemic". The article is summarized in a subtitle: "There's finally good news about AIDS, yet no one wants to hear it. So statistics are doctored, homosexual demographics are overstated, and scarce research funds are squandered – all for an epidemic that may have peaked some time ago. ^[2]

Michael Fumento's main theses are that the "AIDS epidemic" is not another bubonic plague that will destroy a large part of the world's population; that the incidence of reported "AIDS" cases may already have peaked; and that "AIDS" shows no signs of spreading beyond the original risk groups: gay men, intravenous (IV) drug users, and recipients of blood products.

Fumento has nerve and a sense of humor. He doesn't hesitate to refer to official government projections as "worthless" and "garbage", and he has a field day quoting the more absurd doomsday-scenario statements made by "AIDS experts" and media stars. For example, he cites Harvard's "pop scientist Stephen Jay Gould", who "told readers of The New York Times Magazine in 1987: 'Yes, AIDS may run through the entire population, and may carry off a quarter or more of us.'"

And Fumento gleefully exposes the looniness of "sex therapist Therea Crenshaw":

She told Congress: "If the spread of AIDS continues at the same rate, in 1996 there could be one billion people infected; five years later, hypothetically 10 billion; however, the population of the world is only five billion." Don't snicker. She was then appointed to President Reagan's AIDS commission.

Forbes Magazine of 26 June 1989 ran an article on Michael Fumento written by Joe Queenan: "Straight Talk About AIDS". ^[3] Queenan gives a fair summary of the American Spectator article, and describes the trials and tribulations Fumento experienced for expressing his ideas, which are anathema to the "AIDS establishment" as well as to some of his fellow conservatives.

ACT UP of New York was greatly offended by Queenan's article, and voted to zap Forbes Magazine, which they did on Tuesday, 20 June 1989, at the beautiful Forbes building on lower Fifth Avenue. ACT UP's zap proposal, handed out at their meeting of 19 June, was not very lucid, and it's difficult to tell what specifically ACT UP objected to in Queenan's article. Mostly they condemned it in such vague terms as "irresponsible journalism" and "this kind of garbage". The closest thing to a coherent criticism of Queenan's article is the statement: "It is about a forthcoming book by Michael Pumento [sic] and takes the reactionary position that the heterosexual population can relax about AIDS, that it is not spreading to them and it is essentially a 'bumper sticker disease'."

The zap was successful. Editor-in-Chief Malcolm S. Forbes published an apology in the issue of 10 July 1989, and also published the entire text of a leaflet that ACT UP had handed out at their zap. The leaflet dogmatically reasserts the central tenets of the HIV Myth. Although stylistically militant, there is nothing in the ACT UP leaflet that is not compatible with the interests and ideology of the AIDS Establishment. Speculations about "the incidence of new HIV infections" are not very helpful when they obscure the basic epidemiology of diagnosed cases of "AIDS".

Was Joe Queenan right to let the readers of Forbes Magazine know about the ideas of Michael Fumento? I think so. Important business decisions depend upon knowing the truth about the incidence of "AIDS", and it's hard to be sure of the truth when on side of a debate is suppressed. Although ACT UP has the right to zap whomever they wish, the thrust of their action was to stifle legitimate debate, to suppress a reasonable, if unorthodox viewpoint. The incidence of "AIDS" ought to be a proper topic for discussion, and I suggest that, instead of getting mired down in ideology, we simply look at the numbers.

New York Native, CDC, GAO, The New York Times, GMHC

To my knowledge, I was the first writer to challenge the CDC's "AIDS" projections. In my Native article of 9 March 1987, "Let The Reader Beware: The Report of the National Academy of Sciences on AIDS Is Filled With Misinformation", I accused the CDC of having put forward a "dire scenario" without an adequate empirical basis. I expressed skepticism regarding the CDC's "nightmarish" projections of more than 270,000 cases of AIDS in the United States by the end of 1991, with more than 74,000 occurring in 1991 alone.

In October 1988, I wrote a brief article which argued that the incidence of "AIDS" appeared to be peaking, even with a considerable inflation of cases caused by an expanded CDC surveillance definition, which went into effect in September 1987. I described the CDC projections as "absurd", and suggested: "Perhaps the CDC, realizing that reported cases were going to fall far short of their projections, decided to stretch the definition of 'AIDS' in order to increase the number of cases."

By 1989 it must have become painfully obvious to the more thoughtful members of the AIDS Establishment that the CDC projections were far too high. Plans were probably underway to retreat as gracefully as possible. Then along came the General Accounting Office (GAO), which on 26 June 1989 issued its own two-year study. Using the assumptions that they had been given by the Public Health Service (HIV-as-cause, seropositivity estimates, progression rates, and so on), the GAO calculated away, and concluded that the CDC's projections were far too low! The GAO put forward its own estimates, which were a third again higher than the CDC's, projecting from 300,000 to 480,000 Americans diagnosed with "AIDS" by the end of 1991.

The GAO study added embarrassment to embarrassment; within days it was sharply rebuked in a New York Times editorial, which began:

The AIDS epidemic is far from over. But the toll of new cases, which has been rising for years, may at last be about to level off and then decline. Gloomier numbers released this week by the General Accounting Office mask the possibility that the epidemic's worst rages may be abating. ^[4]

The Times editorial provoked Richard Dunne, Executive Director of Gay Men's Health Crisis, Inc. (GMHC), to write a letter in which he supported the higher estimates of the GAO: "Your dismissal of this report is based on conjecture, not facts." Dunne then went on to present as "facts" some of the more ludicrous conjectures of the HIV theorists, such as the ever-increasing "incubation period" between "infection with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, and the development of AIDS symptoms". ^[5]

Once again, I propose that we all set aside preconceptions and look at the numbers. Are the CDC projections too high, too low, or just right? Is the incidence of "AIDS" peaking, or is it still going up? We now have the data to answer these questions.

The Reality of Incidence

Graph 1 shows "AIDS" incidence for the United States from 1981 through the end of 1988, broken by half-year of diagnosis. The light top segments of the bars represent cases diagnosed according to the expanded CDC surveillance case definition, which went into effect in September 1987. The black bottom segments represent cases diagnosed according to the old (pre-1987) definition. It should be noted that the CDC has retroactively assigned a few "new" cases as far back as before 1985.

Even with inflation resulting from the new case definition, the incidence of "AIDS" appears to have peaked in the first half of 1988. Significantly fewer cases were diagnosed in the second half of 1988, compared to the first half of the same year. To be sure, owing to reporting lag, there could still be a few cases reported that would be retroactively assigned to 1988 or even earlier. But there should be very few. The CDC is proud of having greatly reduced reporting lag, so that almost all cases are reported in less than a half year.

If we look only at the black bar segments, representing the old definition, it is clear that incidence peaked in the second half of 1987, and has been going down ever since then.

Therefore, unless something weird and unexpected happens, we can say that the "incidence of AIDS" in the United States is peaking, or has already peaked. ^[6]

Reality vs. Government Projections

In Graph 2 the bars represent actual reported "AIDS" cases, by year of diagnosis. The line of dashes with asterisk markers represents the CDC's projections. The CDC predicted that in 1988 there would be 39,000 "AIDS" diagnoses, whereas in fact only 27,073 were reported for that year as of 22 June 1989.

Actually, Graph 2 understates the disparity between the CDC projections and actual incidence, inasmuch as the projections were based on the old (pre-1987) case definition, whereas the bars represent both the old and the new (expanded) definitions. The black bar segment for 1988 shows only the cases diagnosed according to the old definition, and is about 30% shorter (representing only 18,950 cases, which is less than half of the CDC estimate of 39,000 cases).

The incidence of "AIDS" has already begun to go down, and we may reasonably assume that incidence for the years 1989, 1990, and 1991 will each be progressively lower. During this same time period, the CDC's projections show a sharp upward swing.

And then there are the GAO estimates that Richard Dunne preferred over the CDC's. These were about a third higher than the CDC's, and therefore even further removed from reality.

In sum, there can no longer be any doubt that the CDC's projections are far too high. It's time they were revised in a realistically downward direction.

The Reality of Risk

Graph 3 shows a breakdown of the total United States "AIDS" cases according to risk categories, at two different points in time. The black bars represent cases diagnosed as of 12 February 1990. In this five-year time period, the cases have increased more than fifteenfold, and yet there is very little change in the proportions of the various risk groups. Gay men now account for a slightly smaller proportion, and IV drug users and transfusion cases account for slightly larger proportions of the total cases. But the important thing is that the "other" category – comprising Haitians, alleged "heterosexual contact", pediatric cases, and "other/unknown" cases – has remained virtually unchanged. In other words, "AIDS" is not spreading. This suggests that "AIDS" is really caused by something other than an infectious agent, for if "AIDS" were truly an infectious disease, it would long ago have fanned out into the general population: straight men and women who do not use intravenous drugs. It suggests that the real causes of "AIDS" may be found in the characteristics and the environments of the risk groups.

It is noteworthy how tiny are the two categories of transfusion cases and hemophiliacs. Despite the great media emphasis they have received, both categories together are statistically negligible.

One of the prickliest topics in "AIDS" discourse is that of heterosexual "AIDS". Ex-Surgeon General Everest Koop stated in early 1987 that within six months there would be an "explosion" of "AIDS" cases among heterosexuals. Six months passed, and there was no explosion, although the CDC was doing its best to create one, even going so far as to reassign all of the Haitian cases to the heterosexual category. More than two years have now passed, and it is clear that there will be no explosion. Heterosexuals per se appear to be at very little, if any, risk for "AIDS".

A very fine analysis of the "heterosexual AIDS" hoax appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review of March/April 1988. ^[7] The article by Edward Brecher described how a few courageous investigative journalists uncovered the truth: that heterosexual "AIDS" cases were very rare indeed, perhaps nonexistent, and that "the potential for heterosexual spread was exaggerated in order to obtain increased government funding." I recommend this article highly. Edward Brecher is now beyond reach of an ACT UP zap. A few months ago, acting on principle, he committed suicide, being elderly and in poor health.

Commentary

Although ACT UP and GMHC may be concerned that reducing the estimates of future "AIDS" cases might be used as an excuse for reducing expenditures, the real problem is that resources have not been allocated where they are needed. Almost everything being done to fight "AIDS" is wrong. With policies exclusively on the false and foolish HIV hypothesis, expenditures of more than a billion dollars a year are providing a bonanza for the burgeoning AIDS industry, but doing nothing to alleviate the health crisis. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars to provide free AZT has not been helpful if AZT is, as I have argued repeatedly, a poison with no scientifically established benefits. The straightforward and relatively inexpensive research has still not been done that would enable us to find out exactly what AIDS is and what causes it.

It is disgraceful that the United States, alone among industralized nations, has no national health insurance program. It is shameful that people with "AIDS", or for that matter anybody, should be without shelter, food, or medical care. Public resources are finite. Let's see that they are used in a fair and rational way.

References and footnotes

1. ↑  I put "AIDS" in quotation marks to emphasize the problems inherent in the construct. Although people are undeniably getting sick, it is not known exactly what "AIDS" is or what causes it. It is far from clear that "AIDS" is a single disease entity or that it has a single cause, viral or not.
2. ↑  Michael Fumento, "The Incredible Shrinking AIDS Epidemic", The American Spectator, May 1989.
3. ↑  Joe Queenan, "Straight Talk About AIDS", Forbes Magazine, 26 June 1989.
4. ↑  Editorial, "Why Make AIDS Worse Than It Is?", The New York Times, 29 June 1989.
5. ↑  Richard Dunne (letter), "This is No Time to Be Complacent About AIDS", The New York Times, 20 July 1989.
6. ↑  From the present perspective, something weird and unexpected did indeed happen. Through nucleoside analogue poisoning, tens of thousands of HIV+ individuals are acquiring a diagnosis of "AIDS".
7. ↑  Edward M. Brecher, "Straight Sex, AIDS, and the Mixed-Up Press: The epidemic was spreading rapidly to heterosexuals – or was it?", Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1988.

© 1990 by John Lauritsen
Originally published in The AIDS War