[mynameishere]

I grew up around the time teens were force-fed sex education regarding AIDS, and the message was loud and clear and consistent: Ordinary sex is a great way to contract HIV. This, in fact, was always a lie--and a coordinated lie--and the scientists knew about it.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/895/what-are-the-od...

the odds of a heterosexual becoming infected with AIDS after one episode of penile-vaginal intercourse with someone in a non-high-risk group without a condom are one in 5 million.

(Sorry for the crummy source, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this BS.) The original infections seen by doctors weren't just homosexuals, but those who had sometimes dozens of sexual encounters per week. It was clear from the beginning how this disease was spread--reciprocal anal sex.

So why the contrary propaganda? Well, if a disease primarily effects a small, ultra-promiscuous portion of two percent of the general population, research funding tends to lose popular support.

[e12e]

The risk of being infected with hiv by someone who doesn't carry the virus is obviously very small. Very few people have hiv, so you probably won't be infected if you have sex. That's how I read that quote, anyway. Are you saying that advocating never having sex with the same partner more than once would have been better advice for reducing the spread of STDs?

The unique thing about hiv is the high moortality rate (and cost of treatment). It makes perfect sense to reduce transmission before it becomes a true global epidemic.

[makomk]

Obviously. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the scientists wanting to make sure that widespread HIV infection didn't break out within heterosexual communities - which it could easily have done as we've seen in Africa. If heterosexual people had been taught they didn't need to worry about HIV, we could easily have had similar outbreaks here which would rapidly have made the odds a lot worse. (Also, it's impossible to reliably tell if the person you're having sex with is a member of a high-risk group anyway.)