Læknaneminn - 01.04.1997, Blaðsíða 104

Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick
dictors of human immunodeficiency virus-type 1
(HIV) infection (Penkower et al., 1991), recreational
psychoactive drug use has been associated with HIV-
related illness or infection among homosexual men.”
104. In 1995, the National Institutes of Environmental
Health Sciences reconfirmed the nitrite-AIDS hypoth-
esis. Based on exposure of mice to isobutylnitrites
(IBN) (poppers) for 15 weeks the Institute published
in 1995, “The results suggest that, in the absence of
impaired pulmonary host defenses, IBN produces sig-
nificant and partially reversible suppression of systemic
humoral immunity” M1. And in the summer of 1996
the Royal Pharmaceutical Society first banned the sale
of nitrites in the UK citing: “Our primary concerns
were the health risks associated with the drug, includ-
ing the suggestive links between poppers and Kaposi’s
147
sarcoma .
Also in 1996 a Swiss court convicted a sex offender
for popper use because poppers cause “headache,
arrhythmia, vertigo, fainting, paralysis, and uncon-
sciousness”. During the same year an official of the
Swiss Public Health Office, BGA, stated to the gay
interest journal aKthat it was not possible yet to pre-
dict the health effects of popper use (“noch keine
Risikoabschatzung des Poppers-Gebrauchs möglich”),
although he acknowledged that a man had just died
after inhaling two grams of amyl nitrite ".
2) Lifestyle factors contributing to drug pathogenicity.
Many drug diseases are consequences not only of direct
drug toxicity, but also of frequent drug-induced sup-
pression of appetite causing malnutrition and sleep
depravation, 126 both of which are the world’s leading
causes of immune suppression 143. These health risks
are compounded by poverty due to the enormous costs
of illicit drugs. For example, an average cocaine habit
of lg per day costs $800 per week 67.
One of the first to ring the alarm about drug diseases
among male homosexual drug users was the American
writer John Lauritsen, author of Death rush, poppers
andAIDS 144 and TheAIDSWar ,7. In The AIDSWar
Lauritsen descibed in 1993 the explosion of drug use in
the gay scene in London:
Every Saturday night an estimated 2,000 gay men
attend a dance club where drug consumption is the
main activity. According to London sources, virtually
100 per cent of the men are on drugs, from 3.0 in the
morning, when the club opens, until it closes many
hours later. Especially popular is a variety of Ecstasy
(amphetamines), whose ingredients are claimed to
include heroin. Poppers are sold legally in London.
No one seems to thinlc they even count as drugs, as gay
physicians, writing in the gay press, have said that pop-
pers are harmless.
None of the major AIDS organisations have proper-
ly warned about the dangers of drugs. At most, their
risk-reduction literature has urged people to use alco-
hol and drugs in moderation, so as not to affect the
‘judgement’. Drugs are portrayed as risky only to the
extent that they might facilitate a lapse into ‘unsafe sex’.
Poppers - which cause genes to mutate, which cause
severe anemia, which can kill through heart attacks,
which suppress the immune system — are depicted as
bad only if they cause someone to forget condoms. 97.
But recently even the established gay press appears to
show some concern that recreational drugs may do
more than facilitate HIV infection. For example, the
British magazine Gay Times cited in its survey of the
bewildering drug use of male homosexuals in 1996
(Table 5) the concerns of a first aid officer from a
London gay club:
I see some faces in the same dire state every weelc for
years and I personally think there’s gonna be an awful
lot of very ill people in a few years time. Taking all
these substances on such a regular basis cannot be good
for you. Medically it can’t. Sooner or later, some-
thing’s got to give. 107.
And an article in 1996 in the American gay magazine
The Advocate with the title “A deal with the devil”
asked philosophically:
So why is it that in the gay world, where almost half
the urban male population is dead or sick from an epi-
demic closely associated with substance use, there is
such ambivalence about drugs that AIDS organizations
profess to see nothing wrong with raising money from
events that glamorize drug use? Why, despite the bit-
ter legacy of AIDS, do we continue assuring ourselves
that being gay means we have to be totally non-judg-
mental about the very things that have wiped us out? 72
3.5. Conclusions. The chronology and epidemiology
of the American and European drug epidemics, which
affects primarily 25-54 year old males, coincide exactly
with the AIDS epidemic. Moreover, a comparison of
the long-established list of drug diseases with the
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