Miami Herald - Saturday, May 19, 1984
Steve Sternberg, Herald Medical Writer

"People who stated they were not gay are gay," Dr. Gordon Dickinson, a UM expert on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), said Friday. "But it is extremely difficult to get facts."

The doctors say cultural taboos inhibit Haitians from disclosing homosexuality. Nonetheless, UM researchers say they have learned through interviews that about 10 of Dade's 62 Haitian AIDS victims are male homosexuals.

The observation is significant, Dickinson said, because it sheds light on the syndrome's puzzling spread through the U.S. Haitian community.

"I have talked to gay men with this disease, and they say that there is an active gay population within the Haitian community," Dickinson said.

"It also appears that there is a fair amount of promiscuity among men and women, though not necessarily more than in other segments of the population," he said.

The observation that many Haitian AIDS victims are male homosexuals supports, at least partly, an assertion by Haitian physicians that the disease is not widespread among the Haitian population as a whole.

Instead, the physicians say, AIDS is transmitted in Miami's community of 30,000 Haitians as it is throughout the rest of the nation -- by homosexuals, blood donors and users of dirty hypodermic needles, said Dr. Jean-Claude Desgranges, coordinator of the Haitian Coalition on AIDS.

Researchers still are unable to explain why the disease seems more prevalent among Haitians than among other ethnic groups, and why Haitian women apparently contract the disease but not in typical ways -- intimate sexual contact and exposure to infected hypodermic needles or blood products.

"We want answers, but they are answers that take months to come by," Dickinson said.

AIDS is a fatal ailment that cripples the body's natural defenses against infection. The most recent statistics, compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC), show that 38.3 of Dade cases are among Haitians.

In New York City, 36 percent of AIDS cases are among Haitians, but doctors have been unable to determine whether any of the Haitian AIDS victims are homosexual, said Dr. William Robbins, of the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.

"They don't admit it," Robbins said.

To learn more, New York scientists are collaborating on a study of AIDS in Haitians with scientists at the University of Miami and the CDC. About 40 Haitian AIDS victims have been recruited in New York and Miami. The victims will be compared with healthy Haitians by researchers looking for a common thread of evidence among those who have the disease, said Gus Sermos, the CDC's epidemiologist based in Miami.

"It was a premature conclusion that being that Haitian is a risk factor (for AIDS)," Desgranges said. "Not enough is known. By saying being Haitian is a risk factor is where they are wrong. There is no way you can take a population group and accuse it of being susceptible to a disease."

The cause of the ailment appears to be one of two newly recognized viruses, either Human T-cell Lymphotrophic Virus type III (HTLV III) or Lymphadenopathy Virus (LAV). Both can be transmitted through body fluids and kill cells that fight off foreign organisms.

As of May 7, federal disease detectives reported 4,370 cases nationwide, with 1,885 deaths. The death rate has hovered at about 43 percent since the syndrome was recognized in 1981.

Dade County AIDS Cases

Pct. of Cases Total Homosexual or Bisexual 80 49.4 IV Drug User 10 6.2 Haitian 62 38.3 Hemophiliac 0 0.0 Unknown 10 6.2 Statistics through April 16, 1984

SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control

CAPTION: CHART

Dade County AIDS cases

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