From: ((Steven B. Harris)) Subject: Re: HIV is no hoax ! Date: 14 Jun 1995 ak962@lafn.org (Michael Shaw) wrote: >>Rich: > >>For someone supposedly knowledgable about health to deny this fact is >>shocking. >> >>Still.... >> >>Before AIDS, you may have heard of Hepatitis, which was always at much >>higher incidence in the groups mentioned. But, here's a good one from a >>recent issue of the Omega Journal of Death and Dying (Dr. Paul >>Cameron)-- >> >>The median age at death of homosexuals who die of AIDS is 39. >> >>The median age at death of homosexual men who die of causes other than >>AIDS is 42. Comment: Does Cameron give a reference? I cannot imagine where he would get the figure for homosexual life span in the absense of AIDS, since homosexuality is not something the doctor checks off on the death certificate, and surely not something the country mortality stats record. Do you suppose a few of such folks might just... well... slip through? The only place I can imagine any stats on gay male mortality coming from would be things like the San Francisco Men's Health study, and even here they are going to be skewed if there is any age censoring at all in the inclusion criteria, or even if there is any censoring from willingness to participate in the study, both of which are inevitable. Do openly gay men in San Francisco have a higher mortality than gays in the closet? Or gays in (say) Iowa? It's easy to imagine so. Finally, I should note that any study of mortality in gay men needs to compare not AIDS-death age with non-AIDS-death age, since a certain number of HIV-positive men commit suicide, and don't get classed as AIDS deaths, and a certain number of HIV-positive people also die of medical causes related to HIV and don't get classed as AIDS-deaths (the Liberace set). What we're REALLY after, therefore, is life expectancy of **HIV-negative gay men**. I've love to have that number if you have it. But I don't think you do. Steve Harris, M.D. |