<HTML>Chris writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">> Apparently, Kaposi (an opportunistic infection) was quite prevalent in > AIDS patients in the 1980s (60% or so), but has since declined > significantly, to 20% or less: So the question is, why did it decline and why did it never show up in more than 60% of the affected population? And I might add: why did it never show with gay "white" men?</BLOCKQUOTE> One more in a series of patently false pieces of misinformation. The problem is that when one refutes one, we just move on to another one, so the discussion goes nowhere. This is why people begin to express immense frustration with the thread. For the record, Kaposi Sarcoma [KS], like all other opportunistic infections associated with HIV/AIDS, clearly pre-dates the epidemic. No opportunistic infection is evidence of a HIV infection; its presence simply means that the a full clinical workup needs to be done to establish whether or not an HIV infection is present. How one treats these infections will vary immensely based on the presence or absence of HIV. Historically, KS was a relatively rare form of skin cancer, found almost exclusively in older men of Mediterranean origin, especially Italians and Jews. Among skin cancers, it was among the most benign and most easily cured. With the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, KS, along with PCP, were the two earliest opportunistic infections to appear in people with AIDS. Far from never showing in gay 'white' men, the original problem was that the description of its presence [the appearance of purple colored lesions on the skin] was based on its appearance in men with low melanin skin; it assumes a different color, a darkish brown color, in men with darker pigmented skin. KS in people with HIV/AIDS is a much more aggressive and virulent disease than it its classical form. The lesions appears on internal body organs as well as on the skin. Treatment is also difficult because the common cancer treatments have immune suppressant effects -- not to be recommended in cases of HIV/AIDS. Unlike PCP, KS was always a disease that appeared rather disproportionately among gay men with HIV/AIDS. Its relative decline in people with AIDS is, in part, a statistical result of the increase of people with HIV/AIDS who are other than gay men. Gay men with HIV/AIDS who were also infected with KS had a slower rate of decline in immune systems. Since the etiology of KS is still very poorly understood [like the etiology of most cancers], we do not have an explanation of why it is so much prevalent among gay men with HIV/AIDS, or why it had the impact it did on the progression of HIV/AIDS. But given that opportunistic infections require their own agents, separate and apart from HIV, it is clear that the answer to those questions lie in that etiology. Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>