Læknaneminn - 01.04.1997, Side 100

Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick
parable. For example, in 1984, 86% of British male
homosexual AIDS padents from St Mary’s Hospital in
London had inhaled nitrites compared to 86.4% from
clinics in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta 108.
Since in 1995 at least 1.5 million bottles (15 ml each)
were sold for a profit of £8.5 million in the United
Kingdom 76, it is likely that the current American use
is proportional to its British counterpart. This assump-
tion is confirmed by numerous epidemiological studies
of cohorts of American male homosexuals (see 3.2,
Table 5). Even the NIDA and the CDC announced
informally at a nitrite-AIDS conference in 1994 109,
that "nitrite use by gay men in Chicago and San
Francisco” has increased in the 1990s after a decline in
the late 1980s uo.
Recently amphetamines have gained popularity,
compared to nitrites, as sexual stimulants among
American male homosexuals 71. Says the director of an
outpatient treatment center in Los Angeles, “Look at
the demographics. It’s such a nasty drug, the way it
destroys the body and the mind. Crystal (ampheta-
mine) is a gay person’s drug and a gay community
problem.” 71.
According to the CDC from before 1984 11MB, and
according to independent observers to this date 26-76-71'
80,94,105,107, u3-iis; American and European male homosex-
uals at risk for AIDS or with AIDS stand out not only
for the amounts, but also for the bewildering combina-
tions of recreational drugs used (see Table 5). For exam-
ple, the biggest American survey of about 5000 male
homosexual men, the MAC study, reports various
combinations of 11 recreational drugs 103,104 (see Table
5). The median age of these 5000 American homosex-
ual men at risk for AIDS and with AIDS is 32 years
117
In an interview with the gay magazine The Advocate
about a “Morning party” to benefit the Gay Men’s
Health Crisis (GMHC) on Fire Island in New York in
August 1992 Larry Kramer, founder of GMHC and
author of the novel Faggots, commented:
I loathed the Morning Party. The Morning Party
sent me into a depression I cannot begin to descibe.
After twelve years of the plague, I should come back
and see the organisation that was started in my living
room having a party like that! ... There were 4,000 or
5,000 gorgeous young kids on the beach who were
drugged out of their minds at high noon, rushing in
and out of the Protosans to fuclc, all in the name of
GMHC.
Among the 685 respondents to “the biggest ever sur-
vey of gay men’s drug use” conducted in England in the
summer of 1996 by Gay Times, 80% had used poppers
(nitrite inhalants), 48% ecstasy (amphetamines), 57%
speed (amphetamines), 40% coke (cocaine), 48% acid
(LSD), 25% heroin, 76% cannabis, 58% cigarettes,
95% alcohol 107 (Table 5). A tricontinental epidemio-
logical study confirms and extends the bewildering pat-
tern of recreational drugs consumed by male homosex-
uals with AIDS or at rislc for AIDS in the US and
Europe and finds the same pattern repeated in
Australia 102. Remarkably not one of the many studies
recording drug use by homosexual men with AIDS or
at risk for AIDS has ever identified even one AIDS
patient who was drug-free (see Table 5)!
3.4. Drug diseases. The ultimate costs of the
American/European drug epidemic are the staggering
numbers of drug diseases and drug deaths: in 1994,
8,541 Americans died from illicit recreational drugs,
and 518,521 were delivered to emergency rooms for
drug diseases 52 (see Table 2). In Germany there were
2125 deaths officially blamed on drug use in 1991, and
1565 in 1995 10. Because of the high morbidity and
mortality associated with long-term intravenous and
oral drug use, addicts typically die at an average age of
only 30 years 2<5’39'41'86'118.
The first scientific paper on drug diseases describes
immunodeficiency caused by morphine addiction in
Paris, France, in 1909 119. An early American study by
the pathologist Willis Butler first drew attention in
1921 “to the fact that most addicts suffered from a seri-
ous illness, such as syphilis or tuberculosis” 54. Since
then numerous scientific studies, listed in Table 6, have
documented the drug diseases of long-term drug
addicts and their babies. These diseases include
immunodeficiency, pneumonia, tuberculosis, demen-
tia, candidiasis, weight loss, diarrhea, fever, night
sweats, congenital abnormalities, mouth infections,
impotence, epileptic seizures, paranoia, lym-
phadenopathy, hemorrhages, hypertension and many
others “•■“■71'120-127.
Table 6 also records the many overlaps between the
well established drug diseases and the diseases
embraced by the CDC’s newest AIDS definition of
LÆKNANEMINN
98
1. tbl. 1997, 50. árg.