why is it that for the first few years after HIV was discovered about 85% of the ppl that had it were gay?

Question

im not tryin to gay bash here, cuz i couldnt care less about other ppl's sexual preference, im just curious about this though, do you think its possible that HIV came from anal sex, like some one got some really coroded crap up in their system, and it began to eat away at their immune system, i think thats more believable than a monkey biting someone, especially when there isnt an epidemic of infected monkeys, and it seems like their would be since they obviously dont use protection, what do you think, and why were so many of the first ppl with the disease homosexual

Answer 1

The first case of AIDS was proven from 1959, in a British sailor (heterosexual) who had recently visited Africa. It wasn't proven until the late 1980s, when a specimen, which had been saved by the leading British diagnostician, who realized it was something special, but couldn't identify it, so saved it, frozen.

Gay transmission was fairly high because of the high promiscuity in that community. Bath houses were very common in those days. I had a number of friends which frequented them. It wasn't uncommon for some people to have sex with up to 20 people in a night. Higher levels of anal sex (which can cause some tissue damage) provides easier transmissio on of the virus.

The virus mutated from a Simian Immune Virus (monkey HIV) found in Africa green monkeys, presumably by people killing and butchering monkeys for food. Butchering involves a lot of contact with blood and sharp knives. This gave the avenue for the species virus jump. It's assumed to have happened early in the 20 century, or the late 1800s. Being sexually transmissible, it slowly spread in Africa, until the the breakdown of the tribal structures by European colonialism and invasion of western cultural values. After this, there was a much higher rate of sexual promiscuity and prostitution along the truck routes throughout Africa.

This later spread to America, via Haiti. Many Haitians fought in Angola, catching AIDs through hetero and homosexual contact. Patient Zero, in the US, was a male flight attendent who liked to visit bath houses (mid 1970s). He also vacationed in Haiti.

As far as HIV coming from anal sex - anal sex has existed for many thousands of years, probably for as long as the human race has. So has homosexuality. Somehow I don't think it just popped up now, because of a type of sexual activity.

Answer 2

There are several theories of where it came from and how it started, but the reason why we heard about it from the gay community mostly was because gays were more promiscuous sexually. So it naturally spread much faster. It's also known that it will spread faster through anal intercourse when unprotected because the anal linings are much thinner and more easily torn thus allowing infection to be transmitted more easily.

As far as theories on where it started, there's also a theory that it came from the Congo region in Africa when American and European medical scientists were actually having the Pygmy tribes capture chimpanzees to be used as living tissue cultures for polio vaccines. The tissues used were from the kidneys which is also where the RIVV Virus lived in chimps.
The Pigmy's are also known for eating chimpanzee flesh, much like we eat any other animal flesh.
The theories all revolved around the idea that either the diseased kidney tissues carried the virus even when used as a carrier for the polio vaccines and thus the polio vaccines harbored a form of the RIVV virus which mutated into HIV in humans when the polio vaccines were given.

The real issue is in Africa where men actually believe a folk tale that if an infected man has sex with a virgin it will clean him of the virus. Currently there is a HUGE issue with female children of as young as three years old being raped by infected males. Thus only propogating the spread of the disease.

Answer 3

HIV originated in Africa. It was SIV, simian (monkey) immunodeficiency virus. It is actually not a deadly virus in monkeys, so you wouldn't know by looking at the monkeys if they have it. Viruses are constantly mutating, and at some point the virus became transmittable to humans. It is deadly in humans.

Patient zero for North America is thought to be a flight attendant who traveled a lot, and therefore had a lot of sex in various places in the country. Since he traveled extensively outside the country it is thought that he contracted it in Africa and brought it back to North America. (And NO, unlike someone else suggested, he did not have sex with a monkey. It is thought that Eating infected monkey could have been the cause of transmission, and it is also thought that multiple people contracted the virus from monkeys, not just this one flight attendant. It's just that he had the widest range of travel.)

So that's generally how it's thought to have come to the US. As for how it spread through the gay community at first well this flight attendant had sex with gay men. You have to remember that back before AIDS was an epidemic people saw little reason to have safer sex. The STDs that were predominant back then were either curable or at least didn't kill you. And in gay men condoms certainly weren't needed as birth control.

So, HIV spread very easily throughout the gay community because anal sex has a higher risk of transmission than vaginal sex. The anus is tighter and drier than the vagina. So more microscopic cuts and tears happen, giving the virus more opportunity to enter the body.

So more gay men fell ill than any other population at first. So everyone thought you had to be gay to get it, and because it was a marginalized population faling ill there wasn't exactly a big hurry to figure out what this new virus was. Heck people didn't even know it was a virus. And since no one studied it no one knew how it was transmitted, either.

It was the gay men themselves who figured out a lot about the virus. They figured out how it could be passed on and so they shut down the bathouses. It was gay men who knew the most about what the symptoms looked like, the progression of the virus, but I don't think anyone was bothering to pick their brains for the information. People were so afraid of contracting AIDS through casual contact that many people were denied medical care.

So easier mode of transmission plus lack of attention from the healthcare community helped the virus spread like wildfire. Because if the majority of the population doesn't know about the disease, and does't know how it's spread, how are they supposed to protect themselves?

On an unrelated note (or maybe it is related. I dunno I'm not too knowledgable on drug culture), there was also a heavy drug culture around the time HIV showed up. No one cared about clean needles back then because again, it was a different mindset. No one knew you could get sick and die from sharing dirty needles. So it also spread throughout the drug culture. Again, junkies generally don't get great healthcare so I doubt anyone was paying attention to what was going on.

It's a good question that you asked!

Answer 4

Because the STRAIGHTS believed they were immune, so even when they got it (and they have it 85% MORE NOW than gays) do. When it was first discovered, the smallest "sampling" of the population was gay men. Because of this fact, it was "more noticeable." Like Blacks and Sickle Cell. Since it was discovered FIRST in gay men, because of the smaller population sampling, it was actually called G.R.I.D. OR GAY RELATED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY. However, in 1987 or so, when they discovered it in the mainstream population, they changed the name to A.I.D.S. as it is today.

Many, many diseases, such as syphilis, and take for instance "bird-flu" are products of species crossovers. Aids is no difference. Why wouldn't a hunter being attacked or bitten or having a cut washed in blood as he cleaned an infected monkey carcass be any less viable a way of transmission than anything else?

The disease was first noticed in Patient Zero, a Bisexual flight attendant, look up his history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Zero

Answer 5

HIV is mostly transmitted through sexual contact, and there's generally little sexual contact between gays and straights. So if the first human victim were heterosexual, it would have struck heterosexuals harder than gays.

Of course, people also tend to stick to their own ethnic groups when choosing sex partners, so it probably would have been identified as a "black disease" or an "asian disease" before spreading into the rest of the population.

Answer 6

HIV is a virus which has nothing to do with anal sex. HIV is more easily transmitted through anal sex, but only slightly.

The virus first infected gay men in certain cities inthe U.S. in the mid 1970s. It spread though sexual contact, and since gay men most often have sex with men, that's who got it next -- more gay men.

In other countries this was not the case. In Africa and Asia, HIV has been primarily a heterosexual disease. Most of the people who have contracted the virus are hetero.

Science has good reason to believe that HIV was a monkey virus which 'jumped' from monkeys to humans. Happens frequently when humans include monkeys in their diet, as they do in Africa.

Viruses 'jump' to humans from other animals that we eat. Chicken pox came from chickens, Cow pox came from cows, etc. We study the disease in the animals where the diease started to find a cure. The original vaccine against small pox came from using viruses from cow who died of cow pox.

Hope this helps.

Answer 7

Actually, there is an epidemic of infected monkeys. Next, tracing something like this is extremely difficult and as such, we only have theories to work with. The most accepted of them is that "Patient Zero" left the U.S. and contracted the virus as it was mutating from a monkey/ape form to human (we're all primates, after all) and came back to the States. Before he became sick, he passed on the virus, probably sexually, to people who passed it on to others and it spread like a spider web, with him at the center. When people began getting sick and the medical community was trying to come up with answers they termed it G.R.I.D. - Gay Related Immune Deficiency. Being gay was not nearly as accepted then as it is today and once the illness was linked to being gay, many people - gay and straight - wanted nothing to do with it. So, the "85%" is pretty off. Rough synopses.

Answer 8

This is ONLY true in the US. And it's true here because that was the population that it entered the country in. Given the way it's transmitted, it took awhile for it to get out of that population noticeably. Worldwide, the figures aren't all that different between gay and straight people with HIV (I don't know if it's enough to be "statistically significant" or not, but I think it's not).

Answer 9

Well, their is now evidence dating AIDS fauter back than the 80s. Some are in the 70s, and a few controversial ones are from as early as the 50's. It is possible that it was around before, but did not spread.

A virus can not just pop up out of nowwhere. It could be that with time, it got stronger. ANthoer thijg is that while in monkies, iyt was weak, but once it was transferd to humans, it got stronger.

Answer 10

because the first known infectedpeople were two gay men, and since gay men don't often have sex with straight women, it took a while for the disease to spread , but now, since there are more straight people than gays, more straight people have it, HIV/AIDS doesn't discriminate!