Some
gloomy
predictions

against my position from "AIDS experts" and university researchers. But
it now comes to light that doctors who, like me, are in private practice,
feel differently.

A survey by M magazine shows that nearly half the doctors in private
practice are so worried about AIDS—contaminated blood that they would
reject transfusions from anonymous donors if members of their own families
had to undergo elective surgery. They would make arrangements to have the
patient's own blood or that of family members used instead.

Seventy—eight percent of the doctors polled said the government
should test high-risk individuals and then track down the sex partners of
those who test positive for AIDS, a measure that has been rejected by the
U.S. Surgeon General and by the American Medical Association.

Twenty—eight percent said AIDS patients should be quarantined. A
general practitioner from California wrote on his response card, "AIDS
can be eliminated by quarantining all AIDS patients on a desert island."
Another doctor wrote, "I feel the public health agencies are negligent
for not quarantining infectious persons already."

Writes A. G. Vogel, editor of MD, "These results indicate a skepti-
cism among physicians about the conclusions reached by researchers and
other public health authorities. There are discrepancies between doctors
in private practice and the ivory tower sorts, but this is extreme."

What can you do as a result of this important survey?

l) Ask your own private doctor what he thinks should be done to pro-
tect the public from AIDS.

2) Whenever you see a doctor on television making pronouncements
about AIDS, try to find out whether he is a practicing physician or an
ivory tower sort. Does he make his living off of AIDS patients? Are his
government grants dependent on the continuation of the AIDS epidemic?

If so, how is he guarding your health?

From the viewpoint of a scientist, the AIDS epidemic represents a
unique learning opportunity. It is one of the few medical conditions
in modern times in which doctors have the opportunity to watch the natural
course of a disease without any medical intervention. For almost every
other disease, doctors have a treatment. Maybe the treatment works;
maybe it doesn't. Maybe the treatment is counterproductive. But in any
case, how often does a patient with hypertension, for example, exit a
doctor's office without some kind of treatment? That is, some form of
intervention.

When was the last time you, or anyone close to you, went to a doctor
without receiving a prescription? Or a test? Or some kind of advice which
represented an intervention to make you better or at least to prevent
you from getting sicker?

Even for diseases for which doctors had poor treatment or none at
all, they still intervened. They quarantined the home. They locked

people in a sanitarium. They restricted them from handling food. They
traced sexual contacts. They intervened.
Not so with AIDS. Everyone agrees there is no treatment. Everyone

agrees there is no vaccine. Society apparently had decided against quar-
antine, against occupational restriction, against mandatory closing of
bathhouses and other places where gays congregate, and against case
tracing. Instead, "AIDS experts" have devoted millions of dollars to
"education in safe sex." That boils down to condom education.

The futility of these interventions is evidenced by the unrelenting
progress of the disease. In spite of all the education on safe sex, this
disease, first described six years ago, has fulfilled its original statis-
tical projections, i.e., the number of patients continues to double every
l0 months or so, just as if there had been no education at all.

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