Chicago Tribune (CT) - Saturday December 12, 1987
John N. Maclean, Chicago Tribune

"It does not appear likely that American heterosexuals will experience an epidemic on the scale of those experienced by African heterosexuals or American gay men," said James Wiley of the University of California at Berkeley's School of Public Health.

In some African societies, incidences of AIDS infection as high as 20 percent have been recorded in the heterosexual population.

"However, we do not know enough to rule out the possibility of a smaller, but nevertheless devastating . . . (epidemic) within a decade," Wiley said. His remarks came on the second of two days of hearings into the lack of reliable information on the number of people infected with the AIDS- causing virus, called HIV.

Wiley said his studies indicate a low average risk of infection for a single heterosexual contact with someone carrying HIV-about 1 chance in 1,000. But he cautioned that those figures are misleading.

"I think there are some people who are much more efficient at transmitting the disease than others," Wiley said. Data from Africa indicate chances of acquiring or spreading the disease can be increased about tenfold under certain conditions; for example, if a person is in a late stage of AIDS, if a person has genital ulcers or if a couple engage in anal intercourse, he said.

Under questioning, Wiley acknowledged that there are no generally agreed- upon data proving those indications.

Two New York health officials told the commission that AIDS already has become an epidemic within certain categories of heterosexuals, once heterosexual drug abusers, their sex partners and children are counted.

"There already exists a large pool of infected heterosexual persons in the country that exceeds a quarter million people," said Dr. Sheldon Landesman of the health science center of the State University of New York.

The federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has estimated that the total number of people infected through heterosexual contact is 30,000 to 115,000.

Landesman said women are becoming infected by drug-addicted sexual partners, most of whom contracted the disease by sharing needles with infected addicts. But there is "little evidence" to indicate the AIDS virus is being transmitted by these women to men who do not use drugs.

If that were to happen, the scientists agreed, the infection process would become "self-sustaining" among heterosexuals.

"The impact of this population on future generations of women and children is just starting to be felt," Landesman said. "It cannot be emphasized too strongly that HIV destroys families.

"Every city that has a serious drug-use problem is under siege by HIV. In the south Bronx area of the city where drug use is common, 8 percent to 20 percent of the sexually active males are infected. The risk to the sexually active woman in this area is immense."

Dr. Stephen Joseph, New York City's public health commissioner, told the panel that the Reagan administration's response thus far has been "only waffling and wavering and failure of nerve."

He called for a "national prevention strategy . . . directed at slowing the spread of the virus among heterosexuals, as well as reducing the toll among homosexual men and intravenous drug abusers and their sex partners and children."

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