REVIEW ARTICLE Demographic Characteristics of HIV: III. Why Does HIV Discriminate by Race?

Abstract—Racial ancestry influences the frequency of positive HIV-tests, F(HIV), as an independent variable. In every occupational, social, or other group tested in the United States, at all ages and for both sexes, F(HIV) increases in the order Asianfi whitefi Native Americanfi Hispanicfi black. Data from South Africa display a similar sequence, white/Asian-Indian fi Colored fi black. This constant relation among the racial categories calls for 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 points to a physical cause and not a socioeconomic or behavioral one. The relative circumstances of black and white Americans as to AIDS, by contrast to HIV ‘‘infection’’, serve 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 trebled, while the ratio of positive HIV-tests in the two groups remained the same. As shown in Part II of this series, F(HIV) signals a response to some sort of health challenge. The intensity of that response is evidently modified by 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. This view explains the peculiar and constant geographic distribution of F(HIV) in the United States as well as the extraordinary fact that Hispanics show characteristically different F(HIV) in the East and in the West. On the other hand, HIV/AIDS theory has no explanation for those, and official explanations for racial disparities as to HIV ‘‘infection’ ’ are plainly racist