Bisexuality, abuse, drugs behind AIDS spread among South's rural blacks.

2003 DEC 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Health officials have struggled for years to understand why blacks across the rural South are contracting AIDS at a faster rate than whites.

A research scientist at the University of Alabama has come up with an explanation, based on hundreds of clinical interviews conducted over nearly a decade: a deadly mix of bisexuality, abuse of women and drugs, all in an environment of oppressive need.

"Poverty is the driving force," the researcher, Bronwen Lichtenstein, said.

While one longtime AIDS educator disagreed with some of the conclusions, most said the findings mirrored what they see going on in areas like Alabama's Black Belt, a poor, rural region where Lichtenstein performed much of her work.

"It's quite a complex situation," said Marilyn Swyers, director of East Alabama AIDS Outreach. "Because of this behavior we are seeing a lot more African American women coming in."

AIDS was long considered a disease of gay white men and IV drug users, even as the virus that causes it spread most rapidly in the black community. In Alabama, about 60% of AIDS sufferers over the past 2 decades are blacks, mostly black men, even though blacks make up only about a quarter of the state's population.

Lichtenstein's work has shown that with homosexuality even less accepted among blacks than whites, some rural men are having "sneaky" sex with other men - sometimes because they like it, sometimes for cash or drugs.