Læknaneminn


Læknaneminn - 01.04.1997, Page 104

Læknaneminn - 01.04.1997, Page 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 LÆKNANEMINN 102 1 • tbl. 1997, 50. árg.
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 22
Page 23
Page 24
Page 25
Page 26
Page 27
Page 28
Page 29
Page 30
Page 31
Page 32
Page 33
Page 34
Page 35
Page 36
Page 37
Page 38
Page 39
Page 40
Page 41
Page 42
Page 43
Page 44
Page 45
Page 46
Page 47
Page 48
Page 49
Page 50
Page 51
Page 52
Page 53
Page 54
Page 55
Page 56
Page 57
Page 58
Page 59
Page 60
Page 61
Page 62
Page 63
Page 64
Page 65
Page 66
Page 67
Page 68
Page 69
Page 70
Page 71
Page 72
Page 73
Page 74
Page 75
Page 76
Page 77
Page 78
Page 79
Page 80
Page 81
Page 82
Page 83
Page 84
Page 85
Page 86
Page 87
Page 88
Page 89
Page 90
Page 91
Page 92
Page 93
Page 94
Page 95
Page 96
Page 97
Page 98
Page 99
Page 100
Page 101
Page 102
Page 103
Page 104
Page 105
Page 106
Page 107
Page 108
Page 109
Page 110
Page 111
Page 112
Page 113
Page 114
Page 115
Page 116
Page 117
Page 118
Page 119
Page 120
Page 121
Page 122
Page 123
Page 124
Page 125
Page 126
Page 127
Page 128
Page 129
Page 130
Page 131
Page 132
Page 133
Page 134
Page 135
Page 136
Page 137
Page 138
Page 139
Page 140

x

Læknaneminn

Direct Links

If you want to link to this newspaper/magazine, please use these links:

Link to this newspaper/magazine: Læknaneminn
https://timarit.is/publication/1885

Link to this issue:

Link to this page:

Link to this article:

Please do not link directly to images or PDFs on Timarit.is as such URLs may change without warning. Please use the URLs provided above for linking to the website.