DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF HIV: III. WHY DOES HIV DISCRIMINATE BY RACE?

ABSTRACT: The relative circumstances of Black and White Americans serves as a further demonstration that HIV does not cause AIDS. Between 1981 and 2000, the ratio of Black Americans to White Americans reported with AIDS has increased by a factor of 3; but the relative incidence of positive HIV-tests in the two groups has remained the same. Racial ancestry influences the frequency of positive HIV-tests, F(HIV), as an independent variable. In a variety of disparate demographic groups in the United States, at all ages and for both sexes, F(HIV) increases in the order Asian White Native American Hispanic Black. Data from South Africa display a similar sequence, White/Asian-Indian Colored Black. This constant relation among the racial categories renders a behavioral explanation less likely than an explanation in terms of genetic polymorphisms of the kind used in tracing human migration patterns. That Native Americans are closer to Whites than to Blacks also bespeaks a physical rather than socioeconomic-behavioral cause. F(HIV) is a response to a health challenge; the intensity of that response is evidently modified by ancestral genomic patterns among HLA genes associated with the immune system. Polymorphisms among these genes are well known and have been correlated with racial disparities in a variety of diseases