Female to male HIV transmission is practically unknown. The exaggeration of the risk is entirely for political purposes and not based on known science.
Epidemiology is pretty clear on this, virtually all HIV cases since the 80s can be traced to one of two primary modes, anal sex and sharing of blood products, usually by illicit intravenous drug use. It is certainly possible to transmit HIV by heterosexual anal sex, but the female is the at-risk party with very little, probably zero, risk on the part of the male. The suggestion in the film that Woodruff contracted AIDS as a result of a sexual encounter with a female IV drug users is laughable. The number of men who have contracted HIV as a result of vaginal sex: zero.
The sources of this myth are multiple. Initial data taken in the late 80s suggested that HIV was spreading to the heterosexual population. In truth, the data was flawed, largely because people deny participation in activities like gay sex and IV drug use. Remember the old saw about VD: "gee, honest, honey, I must have got it off a toilet seat somewhere. How else?"
The other mode was simple misinformation. The AIDS lobby knew that much of America considered HIV/AIDS a problem of homosexuals and drug addicts and, unlike cancer or heart disease, unlikely to affect them personally. So, they made a deliberate calculation to mainstream the perceived HIV risk, even though it was scientifically inaccurate. Didn't matter, their goal was to scare the bejeesus out of straight American and it worked. HIV/AIDS funding soared 700% between 1987 and 1997 as white, middle America was suddenly terrified to sleep with their own spouses.
DBC tells a great story and is an entertaining movie, but it takes great liberties with the truth. That's fine, it is just a story, well-told and compelling but fictional with facts changed for dramatic purposes. I just ask, if you are going to change the basic facts, please don't act like this is a true story, or even based on one. Change the location and names of the characters and quit perpetuating bad science by claiming that redneck heterosexuals are just as likely to get AIDS as a New York drag queen. That's ridiculous.
And, for the record, Ron Woodruff was a classic case of the heterosexual myth. Woodruff was a known bisexual. He wasn't homophobic, on the contrary he was popular figure in the gay community before his diagnosis. He got AIDS the old-fashioned way, gay sex or possibly IV drug use, and not from a female hooker.
"You didn't come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya?"
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libraesque63
8 years ago
Thank you for this informative reply.
Funny where the guy who said I was misinformed got his info.......aids.GOV
laughable
"People who live within their means suffer from a lack of imagination" Oscar Wilde
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caller85071
8 years ago
I think you and the other poster have been misinformed. While it is much easier for women to contract the disease from a man, men can get HIV from women through intercourse.
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drnossal
8 years ago
Possible? Yes. Likely? No.
The odds of a heterosexual contracting AIDS through vaginal sex with an infected partner were estimated as 1 in 500 in an article published in JAMA.
Those odds include both MTF and FTM transmission. FTM is acknowledged as far less likely, though the researchers wouldn't speculate on the odds. If MTF is just three times more likely, then the odds of a FTM based on a single encounter drop to 1 in 1000 or 0.1%.
That paper, incidentally, was published in 1988, at the height of the AIDS is a heterosexual disease now! hysteria. More recent CDC data and a study of heterosexual couples in sub-Saharan Africa found the transmission rate to be more like 1 in 900, again with the woman bearing a disproportionate risk. The researchers there also acknowledge the problem with biased data, even at that rate, many of those cases were actually contracted by homosexual activity or drug use that was unreported by the study participants.
The real reason AIDS is so prevalent in Africa? Needle sharing by poorly funded health initiatives manned by inadequately trained personnel. There's your vector, but nobody wants to admit that, the ramifications are just too terrible.
Again, in the case of Ron Woodruff, the film makers opted to present a red-blooded American man who contracts AIDS from good old straight sex, probably to avoid the story being branded as a "gay" movie. All they really did was perpetuate a terrible scientific lie. Woodruff was by all accounts bisexual; when your house burns down, you look for matches and gasoline, not aliens armed with plasma guns.
"You didn't come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya?"
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Clouseau2 (152)
4 years ago
It's not practically unknown, it's just less likely. Women have gotten HIV from oral sex only. Low risk is not no risk.
Lesbian HIV transmission is practically zero but can happen.
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JoWilli (14971)
3 years ago
Female to male HIV transmission is practically unknown.
dummest thing i have ever heard since a dementia patient stole the presidency
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