Activism Change

From Poppers to Protease Inhibitors

Question:

QUEER ADVERTISING From Poppers to Protease Inhibitors By John Lauritsen

First things first Lauritsen is a long time propagandist for the denialist movement. If you notice he makes many claims in the article bellow yet does not back any of them up with references for even attempt to establish any sort of factual basis for his he claims he just drops his little turds and moves on. Jan. 2000 This talk was delivered at the Queer Studies Symposium, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, 15 January 2000. (click on images for bigger ones)

But poppers are harmful. They damage the immune system. They injure the lungs. They can cause severe or fatal anemia. Poppers are strongly mutagenic, and have the potential to cause cancer by producing deadly N-nitroso compounds. Poppers can cause death or brain damage from cardiovascular collapse or stroke. Poppers have been used successfully to commit suicide (by drinking) and murder. (The victim was gagged with a sock soaked with poppers.)

The above may be true for the chemicals being sold today but it is not true when talking about amyl nitrite’s the original chemcal that made up Poppers when they started and that is still available in the EU and on the internet. There are strong epidemiological links between the use of poppers and the development of AIDS illnesses, especially Kaposi’s sarcoma (or KS), an affliction of the blood vessels. In AIDS cases, KS is found almost entirely among gay men who used poppers, not among members of other "risk groups". For at least five years the top AIDS experts, including Robert Gallo, have known that HIV is not the cause of KS. This was admitted publicly at a 1994 meeting of the National Institute of Drug Abuse. (see ref..) Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image…

There is no such evidence that poppers are in anyway associated with the development of AIDS. The study that the denialists like to claim as there own proof on this subject does not show any relationship between AIDS and Popper use. It does show a relationship to Popper use and KS but only if you read the report as carefully edited by the denialist so that they can make the claims they do about the reports results. Also relevant is the fact that immune problems haven’t been reported with the medical use of amyl nitrites or nitrates in nearly 150 years of use. There was also a huge exposure to people, tens of thousands of whom worked in industrial settings from the 1900’s to 1970’s, especially those working in the manufacture of nitroglycerin explosives and no immunity based problems were ever reported for those groups either. That report is; Unique Identifier      93196687 Authors      Ascher MS. Sheppard HW. Winkelstein W Jr. Vittinghoff E. Institution      Viral and Rickettsial Disease Laboratory, California Department of Health      Services, Berkeley 94704. Title      Does drug use cause AIDS?. Source      Nature. 362(6416):103-4, 1993 Mar 11. Local Messages      At Medical Library, see MEDCAT for holdings Abstract      A hypothesis identifying substance abuse as a main cause of AIDS has naturally excited much publicity. But such claims have no basis in fact. In a subsequent letter Duesberg accused ascher of fabricating data  asher responded… Sir,- Professor Duesberg’s report contains a charge of fabrication with respect to our publication in Nature [1], to which we feel obliged to respond. He refers to our Table IIin which we divided the study subjects into "heavy" and "light" users of amyl nitrites. Since the body of the Table didnot include a "none" category, Duesberg concludes that the subsequent presentation in the Figure ofa non-drug-user group "is therefore a fabrication". However, we clearly state that the two groups shown in Table IIactually consist of "men who reported heavy use of amyl nitrite" and "men reporting none or less than weekly use of amyl nitrite". We acknowledge that it might have been clearer, for someone who failed to read the text, if we had labelled the latter group as "none/light" in the table, but a conclusion of fabrication on Duesberg’s part cannot be justified on the basis of our data. Duesberg also claims that we have confirmed his hypothesis "because heavy drug users were twice as likely to develop AIDS as light users". In this claim, he fails to grasp the significant epidemiological fact that heavy drug-users were 1.56 times as likely to develop AIDS because they were 1.43 times as likely to be HIV-infected than light drug users. Further, it is of critical importance that HIV-positive individuals were equally likely to develop AIDS irrespective of their drug use pattern (51.4% AIDS among heavy-users versus 47.4% among non-users or light-users), which is hardly a robust affirmation of a drug-dose dependent hypothesis; this and the failure of even 1 of the 39 seronegative heavy drug users to get AIDS is inconsistent with Duesberg’s prediction that the incidence of AIDS should be drug-dose dependent and unrelated to serostatus. Gary Stein

Response:

QUEER ADVERTISING From Poppers to Protease Inhibitors By John Lauritsen Jan. 2000 This talk was delivered at the Queer Studies Symposium, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, 15 January 2000. (click on images for bigger ones) When I use the word "queer", as in "queer advertising", it is intended to be negative. My leading thesis is that it is queer — odd and deplorable — that in the past 30 years much of the advertising in ostensibly gay publications has been for poppers, AZT or the protease inhibitor "cocktails". I shall argue that these drugs are harmful; they have been and continue to be the cause of suffering and death for tens or hundreds of thousands of gay men. Let’s start with the premier gay drug, "poppers". It is curious, that almost all gay men, but very few others, even know what "poppers" are. So it’s necessary to begin by defining them. Poppers in their present form are little bottles containing a liquid mixture of volatile nitrites. When inhaled just before orgasm, poppers seem to prolong the sensation. Poppers facilitate anal intercourse by relaxing the muscles in the rectum and deadening the sense of pain. From a biochemical standpoint, the volatile or alkyl nitrites (amyl-, butyl-, isobutyl-, propyl-, and other nitrites) are powerful oxidizing agents. If spilled on the skin, they cause severe burns. The liquid is highly flammable; one of the worst fires in San Francisco history occurred when a poppers factory exploded. Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image… Since 15 February 1989 poppers have been a "banned hazardous product" in the United States. It is illegal to manufacture, distribute, import or sell any isobutyl nitrite substance or any consumer product "used for inhaling or otherwise introduced into the body for euphoric or physical effects". The ban is part of the Drug Omnibus Act of 1988. The initiative for regulating poppers came from the gay community itself. West Hollywood, the gayest city in the world, took the lead in banning poppers. In San Francisco in 1983, lobbying for the regulation of poppers was led by a group of gay doctors, the Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, together with the Committee To Monitor Poppers, founded in 1981 by gay activist Hank Wilson. The original poppers were little glass ampules enclosed in mesh, which were "popped" under the nose and inhaled. Manufactured by Burroughs-Wellcome, they contained pharmaceutical amyl nitrite, and were intended for emergency relief of angina pectoris (heart pain). Amyl nitrite was a controlled substance until 1960, when the prescription requirement was eliminated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). From 1961 to 1969, a few gay men, primarily those with sadomasochistic proclivities, began using amyl nitrite as a "recreational" drug. The prescription requirement was reinstated by the FDA in 1969. In 1970, a new industry stepped into the breach, marketing brands of butyl and isobutyl nitrite. One of the most brilliant advertising campaigns of all time commenced. Within only a few years hundreds of thousands of men were persuaded that poppers were an integral part of their "gay identity". The ads conveyed the message that nothing could be butcher or sexier than to inhale noxious chemical fumes. Bulging muscles were linked to a drug that is indisputably hazardous to the health. Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image…   At its peak, the poppers industry was the biggest money- maker in the gay world, grossing upwards of $50 million per year. Gay publications were delighted with the revenues they received from running full-page, four-color ads for the various brands of poppers. In a 1983 letter to the Advocate, poppers manufacturer Joseph F. Miller, President of Great Lakes Products, Inc., boasted he was the "largest advertiser in the Gay press". For gay men who came out in the ’70s, poppers appeared to be as much a part of the gay clone lifestyle as mustaches or flannel shirts. Accessories were marketed: for leather queans, there were little metal inhalers on leather thongs. One magazine had a comic strip entitled "Poppers"; its hero, Billy, was a child-like but sexy blond, whose two main loves in life were sex and poppers. Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image… By 1974 the poppers craze was in full swing, and by 1977 poppers were in every corner of gay life. At gay discotheques men could be seen shuffling around in a daze, holding little bottles under the nose. At gay gathering places — bars, baths, leather clubs — the poppers miasma was taken for granted. Some gay men became so addicted to poppers that they snorted nitrite fumes around the clock. For some, poppers became a sexual crutch, without which they were incapable of having sex, even solitary masturbation. A number of factors help explain why poppers became a mass phenomenon among gay men: Poppers were legal. So long as they were labelled "room odorizers" and marketed only to gay men, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) looked the other way. Poppers were affordable. A bottle could sell for as little as $2.99, a lot less than heroin, cocaine, or whisky. Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image…   Poppers were assumed to be harmless. The name "poppers" sounds amusing, innocuous. There had been no word in the gay press that poppers were harmful. But poppers are harmful. They damage the immune system. They injure the lungs. They can cause severe or fatal anemia. Poppers are strongly mutagenic, and have the potential to cause cancer by producing deadly N-nitroso compounds. Poppers can cause death or brain damage from cardiovascular collapse or stroke. Poppers have been used successfully to commit suicide (by drinking) and murder. (The victim was gagged with a sock soaked with poppers.) There are strong epidemiological links between the use of poppers and the development of AIDS illnesses, especially Kaposi’s sarcoma (or KS), an affliction of the blood vessels. In AIDS cases, KS is found almost entirely among gay men who used poppers, not among members of other "risk groups". For at least five years the top AIDS experts, including Robert Gallo, have known that HIV is not the cause of KS. This was admitted publicly at a 1994 meeting of the National Institute of Drug Abuse. (see ref..) Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image…   At present, the nitrites-KS hypothesis is as strong as any, from the standpoints of both epidemiology and biochemistry: poppers are a potent mutagen and affect the blood vessels. It is suggestive, that many gay men who used poppers developed KS of the upper lips, nose, and lungs — the route of poppers inhalation. Beginning in 1981 San Francisco activist Hank Wilson, founder of the Committee to Monitor Poppers, regularly sent out packets of medical reports to the gay press. These were ignored. In 1982 a scientist sent a letter to the Advocate, describing research which demonstrated that amyl nitrite strongly suppresses the immune systems of mice. The Advocate’s editor, the late Robert McQueen, said: "We’re not interested." Still in 1982, the Bay Area Reporter (BAR) in San Francisco ran the longest editorial in its entire history, attacking Hank Wilson for criticizing poppers. In 1983, at the request of a poppers manufacturer, the Advocate ran a series of advertisements ("Blueprint For Health") which falsely claimed that government studies had exonerated poppers from any connection to AIDS. Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image… For most of the gay press advertising dollars were more important than the lives of gay men. Among the few exceptions were the New York Native and Christopher Street, which ran articles on the dangers of poppers. For doing so they were attacked by the late Nathan Fain, "health critic" of the Advocate. I began collaborating with Wilson in 1983. We published a series of pamphlets and, in 1986, a little book, Death Rush: Poppers & AIDS. In 1983 I spoke out publicly against poppers for the first time, at a meeting of the New York Safer Sex Committee. I was savagely attacked on the spot by a gay physician (now dead from "AIDS"), who waved his arms and screamed at me like a maniac. That evening I received a death threat. The phone rang. It was a woman who said, coldly and professionally: "Don’t be surprised if you don’t wake up in the morning. [CLICK]" Now it’s 2000, eleven years after poppers were outlawed, and not much has changed. Poppers are no longer advertised in the American gay press, but they are readily available and sold over the Internet. The largest circuit party of all, the Black & Blue, held annually in Montreal, has "Zee-Best Leather Cleaner" as a major sponsor. (I would not recommend using this product on your leather jacket.) Banning poppers isn’t the answer. Our task is to get the word out, that poppers really are dangerous. We have to counteract the disinformation that has been disseminated — not only by the poppers industry, but also by government agencies and AIDS organizations. Click for bigger image…   Click for bigger image… I’ll close the poppers portion of my talk with three words: Don’t use poppers! Gay publications in the U.S. no longer carry ads for poppers. Their place has been taken by AIDS commodities: condoms, viatical settlement companies, funeral services, and drugs. The most prominent advertising in the late ’80s, the "Living With HIV" campaign, promoted the drug AZT (also known as Retrovir and zidovudine). Now we see ads for protease inhibitors, part of the drug "cocktails" that are touted as HAART ("highly active anti- retroviral therapy"). In a typical ad — for Crixivan — a young man is shown clinging to the sheer face of a cliff, ready to plunge thousands of feet to his death; the header says: "In the battle against HIV…" … read more »

Response:

Filed under: Lobbying

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