You’re right. I had no racist intentions whatsoever. My Net-surfing research this week has led me to several mentions of the cultural practice of several lifelong partners (we’d call that polygamy) in some African regions. One of those was at Avert.org: “However, researchers have found that in some areas it is not uncommon for people to have two or more regular sex partners at the same time.”

Regardless of that assertion, we need to get off the racist bandwagon in this country. It’s gotten beyond ridiculous. There are cultural practices that help to contribute to the proliferation of HIV and other STDs, unwanted pregnancies and poverty. How would you explain the numbers, some of which folks like Timothy have cited in this comment thread?

I also am wondering about all the HIV/AIDS data at the CDC, such as the many charts found on this page: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm#aidsrace. I don’t think one new survey of the black population cancels all the other years of data collecting. In 2007 (you can verify on the appropriate CDC chart), African-American cases of HIV outstripped all other populations by far as did MSM contact cases. Numbers are dispassionate and non-racist. They just are.

Oh, Debbie sweetie, I am sure you didn’t mean your comment to be quite as blatantly and appallingly racist as it sounded.

Duncan said: “(If you ask people how many sexual partners they have had, men will always give higher figures than women will; simple mathematics shows that for straights this is impossible.)” Perhaps Duncan could show us this wondrous math that proves women are as promiscuous as men are. I presume that is what you are saying.

It is quite tragic that the black culture, here or in Africa, encourages multiple sexual partners. Africans may be fighting a losing battle in terms of turning that cultural phenonemon around. Of course straights are highly culpable for transmitting HIV and other STDs. All promiscuous folk are on the hook for it, straight or GLB.

I take it the CDC has not retracted their previous reports that place MSM (men who have sex with men) at the higher end of the risk scale for new cases of HIV. It is refreshing, albeit sad, to see the whole story, however, about the black community.

Duncan, it is not strange at all from a public health perspective. Although I wouldn’t necessarily use the word “blame” when referring to HIV infection, in your comment I sense an undertone that you think men are somehow unfairly being targeted as being HIV transmitters and that you think women have been absolved of responsibility.

While I do think everyone with knowledge of how HIV is transmitted has the duty to protect her or himself from infection, at least two reasons exist for the focus on men here. One, a woman is twice as likely to contract HIV from an HIV-positive man, than a man is likely to contract it from an HIV-infected woman during penile-vaginal intercourse. HIV-positive men who are promiscuous are more likely to transmit HIV to a sexual partner than are women who are promiscuous.

Two, if we assume that men really do have more sexual partners than women, we should be more worried about male promiscuity from an HIV standpoint. Combining the fact that some HIV-infected heterosexual men are sexually promiscuous, with the fact that women are more likely to get HIV from a man than give it to him, I don’t think the focus on men in this article is misplaced. It is merely offering an explanation of how transmission occurs in a population that has been hard hit by HIV.

That being said, effective behavioral HIV interventions do target both men and women, so no one really is getting off the hook, so to speak.

In Africa, 100% straight men who do not use IV drugs are quite likely to get HIV.

However, monogamous people of all orientations and on all continents will almost never get HIV.

If what Magic Johnson said is true, he must have been very unlucky.