Robert Trivers has an interview at Salon about his somewhat redundantly titled book “The Folly of Fools”. One of the last questions from the (gay) interviewer is on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, since part of Trivers’ book is on the relationship between being closeted and using condoms. Trivers says ““Don’t ask, don’t tell” was an immunological disaster”. That sounded odd to me, because even if it caused things to be worse than otherwise I was not under the impression that the magnitude of HIV infection in the military was that large. I did some googling and found this page which says “In the United States, the rate of HIV infection is lower in the military than in the general population — one to two people per 10,000 compared with 10 to 20 per 10,000″. I don’t know what the HIV rate in the military was before DADT, my guess is that it did not change much in response.
November 14, 2011
Advertisement
November 14, 2011 at 10:20 pm
CDC indicates that the general population rate is even higher than that, as high as 30/10,000. This was surprising to me.
November 15, 2011 at 12:07 am
But, but that implies that gay men might be less likely to want a career where they get to kill people and break things, which would be stereotypical, so it can’t be true.
November 17, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Was it you who said that if we had simply allowed lesbians to serve openly that would satisfy most everyone involved? Or did you say that about marriage?
November 17, 2011 at 8:23 am
He claims that HIV strains “compete” for dominance and “want” to be the one replicating. When I was very small, I had vague notions that inanimate objects such as my toys would be sad if abandoned of lost, but I grew out of that pretty quickly. At least there’s some sentimental value to imagning a favorite stuffed toy is really your friend, but you’ll never see a heartwarming CALVIN AND HIV VIRUS TV special.
I don’t find his casual way with figures surprising;
November 21, 2011 at 12:23 am
You can get plush toys representing viruses or bacteria here:
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/main/giantmicrobes-originals/