officials challenged to cite behavioral cause of HIV's skyrocketing rates
Ed Thomas
OneNewsNow.com
November 28, 2007

 
A spokeswoman for the public policy group Concerned Women For America (CWA) is warning that a new report detailing Washington, DC's extensive rate of HIV and AIDS should not exclude the prominent cause of the problem -- an increase in cultural promiscuity.
 
 

While establishing that previous rates of HIV infection (1 out of 20) and AIDS (1 out of 50) are still valid, the 120-page report also served as the basis for health official Dr. Shannon Hader's statement that "HIV is everybody's disease." Hader made her statement to The Washington Post. The report also led to DC Mayor Adrian Fenty's statement that the HIV\AIDS problem should be addressed with a sense of urgency that the "epidemic" deserves.

Dr. Janice Crouse of CWA's think tank, the Beverly LaHaye Institute, says use of the report is "distressing" because those who are at risk for exposure to HIV/AIDS are primarily those engaging in sex with an infected person, those sharing a contaminated needle, or those who come into contact with the fluids of an infected person -- such as a healthcare worker. "Those are the only ways you can get HIV/AIDS. And to say [that] everybody is susceptible, everybody can get it, the new face of AIDS is heterosexual women -- these are all just half-truths," she argues.

They also omit, Crouse says, the factors that conservatives and abstinence advocates warn are primarily responsible -- promiscuity and drug use; practices, she says, that are expanding the infection rate for DC residents of all races and gender. "If you don't engage in either of those behaviors [promiscuity and drugs], you're not going to get AIDS. It's a behavioral problem," she states.