European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - October 13, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse                                To your health aids risk still slim for heterosexuals by Daniel q. Haney associated press despite an epidemic of fear the risk of catching aids through heterosexual encounters is still exceedingly slight for most americans experts say according to one calculation the Chance of getting the aids virus from a single act of heterosexual Intercourse May be less than 1 in a million. However some health experts say 1hy Are reluctant to emphasize the current Risic a heterosexuals fearing people will refuse to change their sexual habits if they understand the danger is still Low. I think it encourages a false sense of Security said or. James Foederl of the National cancer Institute added or. William narrow of the . Centers for disease control people will say if it s that Low i guess i can return to cruising bars and the things f did before aids,"1 instead they Hope people will practice monogamy and other safer sex strategies not to Stop any heterosexual aids epidemic but to prevent one from occurring. Studies have shown on the one hand that some people have had sex hundreds of times with an infected male without getting the virus. On the other hand there have been reports of transmission in a single exposure. The Rick a not Aero said Goedert and believe me. People ought to take thai to heart. Unlike a lot of other risks hat people assume in their lives be ii smoking or not wearing seat belts if you happen to be the one who gets it the mortality risk is exceedingly  so what is the real risk or. Jeffrey e. Herns put it this Way if two people who Are exclusively heterosexual and Don t use intravenous drugs make a sexual Contact the chances in the United states today thai this Contact is going to result in transmission of the virus Are very Small the Hazard is Small Al least so far because so few heterosexuals Are infected wih the aids virus. Harris is Art economist it the Massachusetts Institute of technology and an internist Al Massachusetts general Hospital. Using cd figures he calculates that if someone limits sexual Contact to people who Are neither Needle drug abusers nor bisexual men. The Chance thai a partner will be infected with the aids virus is less than t in 1,000. And if someone does have Intercourse with an injected person the Chance that the virus will spread in a single sexual act is also less than tin 1,000. He said this Means that the risk of gelling aids from one heterosexual encounter is less than 1 in 1 million As Long As neither partner to a bisexual Man or drug abuser. However he cautioned How do i know on a random encounter whether i m dealing with somebody who s a drug user or a bisexual Man i Don l have an answer to  experts believe some sax acts Are More Likely than others to transmit the virus. A major reason Why aids has spread so extensively among homosexuals is their practice of anal Intercourse. Ordinary Hetero sexual encounters Are probably less Likely to result in infection. However some experts believe that even during vaginal Intercourse the virus May be More Likely o spread from men to women than from women to men. In Africa aids appears o move readily from men to women and vice versa. Certain factors there May made heterosexual transmission More easy. For instance genital sores caused by venereal disease Are common in Africa and some experts believe these leaks in the skin May play a role in spreading the virus. Ninety percent of the aids reported so far in the United states has been spread through homosexual Intercourse or by sharing dirty Needles. Four percen of Ida cases ars attributed to heterosexual con act. Half of the people in this category wore born in Africa Haiti and other areas where heterosexual transmission is considered key in spreading the disease. Most of the other victims Are Haemophiliacs people who received tainted blood transfusions or children who caught the virus before birth. There is not at this Point evidence of appreciable amounts of free floating heterosexual transmission said or. Timothy Dondoros chief of aids surveillance Elihe cd. Experts believe that if the aids virus does spread among heterosexuals ii will come from infection of the general population by bisexuals and heterosexual drug of users. In fact. They believe that nearly All the heterosexual transmission that s occurred so tar among .-bom americans resulted from direct Contact with drug edit ills and bisexuals. A very email percentage of heterosexual aids victims was infected through blood transfusions. Harris believes there will be no significant spread of aids by purely heterosexual Contact until Al least 120,000 heterosexuals have been infected through sex with bisexuals or drug addicts. He estimates there May be 30,000 such people throughout the country now. Sural experts mkt they thought that Harris 1-irv a million Odds of heterosexual transmission Are probably reasonably accurate. Whether it s 1 in a minion or 1 in 100,000 or 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 10 million. I Don l know. But the risk is very Low in any Given instance said or. Meads Morgan chief of aids statistics at the cd. The majority Are probably at extremely Low risk agreed Darrow of the cd who studies acquired immune deficiency syndrome among female prostitutes. Still he warned that some people mainly sex partners of bisexual men and drug abusers Are really Al High risk and they ought to be aware of  and others pointed out that mathematical exercises Don l take into account differences in risk across the country. The Hetero sexual Hazard is probably higher in new York and other Eastern cities than in the Midwest. And Urban Blacks Are More Likely than whiles to be infected because of higher incidence of intravenous drug abuse where they Livo. Clearly you take a train and gel of somewhere in the Middle of the country and meet somebody in a bar and have a sexual encounter your chances of gelling aids Are extremely Low said or. Warren Winkelstein of the University of California Berkeley. It s much More important to know what your risk of acquiring infection is if you go into a bar in   men at greater risk for aids  associated press nc1rcumcised men face an increased risk of catching aids from an infected sexual partner As do men with syphilis genital herpes or genital warts new studies show. There is a very Strong association Between Lack of circumcision and susceptibility to aids infection or. William Cameron of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg Canada said recently. Trial conclusion comes froma study of 357 men in Nairobi Page 16 the stars and stripes Kenya who visited of civics for treatment of sexually transmitted diseases Cameron reported Al the inter science conference on antimicrobial agents and chemotherapy a meeting devoted to research on Fec Tiona diseases. His colleagues included Francis Plummer of the University of a Efobi and Peter Piot of the Institute of tropical Medici in Antwerp Belgium both of whom Are recognized As authorities on aids in Africa. Cameron also reported that diseases such As syphilis genital herpes and genital warts that cause ulcers or open sores on the genitals can increase a Man s risk of catching aids from sexual Contact with tuesday january 13,1987 an infected woman. Such ulcers can allow easier passage of the virus into a Man s bloodstream Cameron said. A Mcmond study presented Al the conference underscored the importance of genital ulcers in transmission of disease. Or. Thomas quirk of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the National institutes of health in Bemeda. My reported that a study of More than 4,000 people visiting sexually transmitted disease Dirris in baltimore1 also showed that genital ulcers increased the risk of getting infected with the aids virus