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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 15, 1983
PAGE 10
a public health expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in
Atlanta, Ga., AIDS will begin appearing with greater frequency
am <;> ng heterosexuals !! the epidemic grows.
And growth is �
thing most AIDS researchers � � of: by the end of this
year, predicts Dr. James Curran, head of CDC's AIDS Task Force,
there will be more than 2,000 cases. "It has caught everybody by
surprise," says Dr. Abe Macher of the National Institutes of
Health. "Textbooks are being rewritten. We're observing the
evolution of a new disease."
The gays who [initially] got AIDS, it turned out, had often had
many...sexual contacts (a lifetime average of 1,100 partners) ••.•
Not surprisingly, they had also played host to more frequent
bouts of infections, including common venereal diseases like
syphilis, gonorrhea and herpes, as well as the cluster of viral,
bacterial and parasitic disorders that make up what is known as
the "gay bowel syndrome."
Among gays, sexual transmission of AIDS is almost a certainty
Mapping these sexual histories revealed an ominous pattern:
theiincubation period for AIDS {the time between infection and
the onset of symptoms) varies from a few months to more than two
� ears. If, like many diseases7A°IDS turns out to be contagious
uring this "latent" stage, next year's victims--who may be feel
ing perfectly healthy today--could unknowingly be infecting hun
dreds or even thousands of others.
Intravenous drug users make up the second largest category of
AIDS victims, with more than 16 percent of the total cases. Not
all are addicts, explains Dr. Gerald H. Friedland, who has
treated more than 50 of these patients at Montefiore Hospital in
the Bronx, N.Y. Some use the drugs recreationally, he explains,
"but ·they probably all shared needles." According to one young
AIDS sufferer who used to shoot heroin and cocaine twice a week,
the same needle might "hang around for three or four weeks" in
one of the "shooting galleries" where addicts congregate •••• Some
researchers suspect that the reason AIDS has spread to this group
may be that 5 percent of the homosexual victims also shoot drugs•
..•Treatment of AIDS patients has been remarkably unrewarding.
Although drugs can sometimes cure the opportunistic infections,
the patients' severely weakened immunity leaves them vulnerable
to one illness after another....
The specter of a killer disease, inexorably mowing down its young
victims, has ignited the fears of thousands of ordinary Ameri
cans. Where will AIDS strike next, they wonder, and could they
become victims? Fortunately, the prognosis for most people is
reassuring. "We are Q.2.!; dealing with the Black Plague," declares
Dr. Ilya Spigland, chief of virology at Montefiore. "You're not
going to get AIDS from toilet seats or eating in restaurants":"
Ninety-five percent of AIDS victims have identifiable risk
factors� the disease does�trike at random, and does not seem
to be spread
!:!Y
airborne droplets of� cough or�e'e"z"e; like in
fluenza. Most physicians agree that extremely intimate contact-
or exposure to blood--is probably necessary for infection.