<Gratuitously tying a disease to homosexuality is dangerous. We saw it at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. As long as people thought that it was confined to homosexuals, there was little interest in funding research and finding a cure. It was only when the disease--inevitably--broke out of the homosexual population and struck the mainstream that there was a sudden scramble to find a cure, late in the game. We need to be smarter than that--this time around, we already know that MRSA has no innate preference for homosexuals, and there's no excuse for trivializing the situation just to try and score political points.

I wouldn't throw out that word "gratuitous" regarding AIDS too quickly. And remember, it isn't homosexuality, but the behavior of a certain part of the homosexual population, that is the issue. With some exceptions (blood transfusion, babies getting it from mothers) AIDS transmission was, and is, totally behavior driven. You practically had to catch it on purpose. You couldn't get it from toilet seats. You didn't get it from mosquitos. You couldn't get it by having an AIDS patient breath on you, touch you, share your food, or even spit in your beer. It was damn hard to transmit.

Non drug-users in a monogamous relationship, gay or straight, had almost zero chance of catching it.

This latter fact is what the AIDS activists broke their backs trying to conceal, and pushed the idea of the infection of the general population to get more funding for research. In fact, there was no heterosexual AIDS epidemic in the U.S., and one never developed. In 2001, out of 7,600 new infections (this is an epidemic?), only about 900 were from hetersexual contact not specifically related to another risk factor, like sex with a bisexual or drug user. And that was assuming they were telling the truth when interviewed.

Also, you might have noticed that almost all public statistics you see on AIDS on signs, articles, and public announcements mesh America with Africa. There's a reason for that. Out of about 40 million cumulative cases to date, the number you normally see, about 28 million are in sub-Saharan Africa. About 500,000 are in the United States.

The AIDS activists, a noisy and radical minority of the overall gay population, were driven by their belief that an important part of gay "culture" included the indiscriminate sexual behavior and drug use that was rampant when the epidemic began. They resisted closing of bathhouses, tracking of carriers, or any other means that disease control authorities have used in the past to contain deadly contagions.

Patient Zero, the one who some think brought the epidemic to the U.S., had over 2,400 partners on both sides of the Atlantic.

There were some campaigns for "safe" sex and condoms, but no one ever questioned the basic promiscuity issue, never mind the drug use, that was the original cause of the spread of the epidemic.

By the time of the Reagan administration, we were being led to believe that the AIDS epidemic was caused by evil Republicans who just weren't working hard enough to find a shot that would allow them to go back to the sex sprees again.

Recommended reading: "And The Band Played On," by Randy Schilts.

The current bug is much more easily spread than AIDS, and given the limited information I have I don't know the details of each outbreak, but if there is in fact any behavioral component to its transmission, it would be nice if it wasn't totally overlooked for political reasons this time.

Damn right it's political. If it weren't for radical gay politics, there might not have been an AIDS epidemic in the U.S. at all. We should learn from our mistakes.