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SMOKING AND AIDS HAVE A LOT IN COMMON

By Carroll Cox

You would never guess it from what you read and hear in an orchestrated media and from politicians and businesses scared to death of the powerful gay lobby, but smoking-related illnesses and the Aids epidemic have much in common.

They are both the result of behavior.

In Africa, the primary cause of HIV infection is promiscuous heterosexual contact.

In Eastern Europe the spread of HIV is mostly through contaminated needles used by drug addicts.

In the U.S. the annual 40,000 new Aids victims are almost entirely young gay men engaging in numerous anal intercourse sexual contacts.According to a report in U.S. News and World Report, one in three black gay men has HIV.A smaller percentage of Aids victims are needle users. Some U.S. Aids victims are innocent. They are the children born to HIV-infected parents.

Kind of like the victims of second-hand smoke, maybe?

But unlike the tight-lipped worldwide assault on smoking, where even the United Nations is pressuring nations to pledge their allegiance to knuckle-rapping the behavior of smoking, the behavior resulting in Aids gets no such similar treatment.

From all the media analysis it gets, you'd think that Aids bugs just fly through the air, arbitrarily attacking pure and innocent victims.

Do we ever hear that BEHAVIOR is causing a worldwide epidemic? No one dares. They are too busy working on the behavior of tobacco producers and addicts. Smoking does not qualify as an alternative lifestyle. That exalted status is reserved for promiscuous sexual behavior and drug abuse.

Since the beginning of the Aids pandemic in the early 1980s, almost 4 million children worldwide have died of Aids. Almost all of them were infected by their mothers.

Second-hand Aids.

At the end of the year 2000, 25.3 million sub-Saharan Africans were infected with HIV/Aids, an increase of 17.7 percent over the year before. (Now, mind you, this is the drug companies' fault. If they would only give away their medicine there wouldn't be this problem.)

Runaway growth in HIV infection is taking place in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where 700,000 are infected, a 55 percent leap in one year. East Asia and the Pacific have seen a 25 percent leap, the Caribbean an 18 percent increase and in Latin America a 12 percent jump over the year before.

So far, more than 36 million people are said to have died of Aids.

In South Africa, now blessedly free of apartheid, one in eight adults is HIV-infected. In Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia one in five is infected. Some black leaders are pronouncing the death sentence on gays. The Wall Street Journal condemns this practice, pointing out that in Africa, homosexual behavior is not the primary cause of Aids infection. "Targeting gays distracts attention from the real problem," the Journal pontificates. "Chief among them the frightful poverty into which African leaders have led their people through decades of corruption and incompetence. They must get away from scapegoating....."

(And follow the example of America, which, of course, never, never has scapegoats.....except for tobacco companies....)

Well, I always knew that poverty results in some health problems, but I didn't realize that Aids was one of them.

Everything I know about Aids tells me that with some notable exceptions (like second-hand smoke), Aids is the direct result of certain behaviors that each individual chooses to indulge in, whether he or she is rich or poor. I have no argument that drinks, drugs, sex and nicotine all offer comfort against life's pressures, stresses and disappointments.

My only argument is that we allow a self-appointed elite to choose and enshrine certain destructive behaviors, while condemning others.

While our gutless political and business leaders jump on the bandwagon and sing away to whatever tune is currently in vogue.

But beneath all the rhetorical garbage to the contrary, the fact remains that the spread of Aids, like smoking, is fueled by inclination, choice or lack of discipline.

Smoke and croak.

Be gay and play.... and possibly pay.

It's all the same, in fact, if not the public consciousness.

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