|
Answer to AIDS Mystery Found Behind
Bars
By Richard Morin Thursday, March 9, 2006; A02 It is one of the most puzzling mysteries of the AIDS epidemic:
Why did blacks, in little more than a dozen years, become nine times as likely
as whites to contract a disease once associated almost exclusively with gay
white men?
Two researchers say they found the answer in an unlikely
place: prison.
Rucker C. Johnson and Steven Raphael of the Goldman School of
Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley analyzed census data
and a federal database containing detailed information on about 850,000 men and
women who contracted AIDS between 1982 and 1996.
They discovered that the surge in black AIDS patients --
particularly women -- since the early 1980s closely tracked the increase in the
proportion of black men in America's prisons, which by the 1990s had become vast
reservoirs of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The percentage of prisoners who were black increased from 40
percent in 1982 to well over half in 1996, according to government data. At the
same time, get-tough sentencing policies more than doubled the prison
population, producing even more infected black men who passed the disease on to
black women after they were released.
So powerful is the relationship between race, prison and AIDS
that it almost completely explains why half of all new AIDS patients in 2002
were African Americans even though only 12 percent of the population is black;
in 1982, African Americans made up less than a quarter of new AIDS cases. The
link remained strong even after researchers controlled for factors associated
with AIDS, including the use of crack cocaine, Raphael said.
Part of the reason for the rapid spread of AIDS among African
Americans is that so many black men spend time behind bars, Johnson said. About
one out of 12 black men are in jail or prison, compared with one in 100 white
men; at current rates, a third of all black males born today will do
time.
What explains the black-white prison gap? Raphael said the
question is beyond the scope of the study, but other researchers point to
poverty, a lack of opportunities, racism in the criminal justice system and the
lure of the "thug life."
Whatever the cause, the AIDS gap is not going away. Other
studies suggest that half of all prisoners engage in homosexual sex. But
safe-sex programs, key to controlling AIDS in the gay community, are unwelcome
inside prison walls.
In fact, "it's illegal to distribute condoms in prisons in all
but one state" because lawmakers fear it would encourage gay sex, Johnson
said.
Take That, Frenchies
Of course Americans will make sacrifices in wartime. Consider what happened when the United States formed the Coalition of the Willing before invading Iraq in 2003 and France was unwilling to join. With American boys and girls but no garcons or
filles heading for the front, french fries became "freedom fries" and an
ad hoc boycott of French wine was declared, promoted heavily by conservative TV
talker Bill O'Reilly.
Some scoffed, in an aloof and threadbare French sort of
way.
Turns out the boycott worked. Weekly sales of French wines
fell 26 percent at its peak and 13 percent overall for the six months the
boycott was in force, Stanford University economists Larry Chavis and Phillip
Leslie report.
Rest Easy, Working Moms and Dads
Finally, good news for guilt-ridden parents who drop off their precious spawn at day care and worry they'll come back to find their child bloodied or broken. Don't worry. Your child is slightly safer from unintentional
injuries in day care than at home, psychologist David C. Schwebel of the
University of Alabama at Birmingham and his colleagues report in the Journal of
Pediatric Psychology.
Schwebel's team tracked the bumps and bruises of 1,225
children from birth to kindergarten.
Who Would Have Thought?
Happy Euros, BMW Bias and Stripper
Solidarity
* "Subjective Quality of Life of Young Europeans. Feeling
Happy but Who Knows Why?" by Florian Pichler. Social Indicators Research,
Vol. 75, No. 3. An Austrian researcher is baffled about why European
quality-of-life surveys find that young adults face "increasing unemployment,
lower net income and single parenthood" yet somehow remain happier than older
adults.
* "Gender-Based Judgments of Traffic Violations: The
Moderating Influence of Car Type" by Claire Lawrence and Jane Richardson.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 35, No. 8. British psychologists find
that people are more likely to fault drivers of BMWs for being reckless than
drivers of tiny Smart cars after reading identical accident scenarios where the
make of car was altered. Women also were more likely than men to be
blamed.
* "Distancing and Solidarity as Resistance to Sexual
Objectification in a Nude Dancing Bar" by Sue Spivey. Deviant Behavior, Vol.
26, No. 5. A James Madison University professor interviews dancers in a strip
club to learn their strategies for managing obnoxious customers, including
putting their clothes back on.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company ********** Share a Smile!!!************* ++++++++++++++ "Share at Least a Smile with someone new this Season of Love!!" -- PJAdamz **********Keep Hope Alive!!!************* ****Internet Solution**** Learning Yoruba can register with Gotrain247 at www.gotrain247.com for a comprehensive lesson. From AfricaService. Let's Meet there, January!!! PJ Adamz Abuja Nigeria.
SPONSORED LINKS
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
|
_______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. ---------------------------------------
