Dear Editor:

Pride season is here and our kick-off event will be “Gay Day” at Petco Park with the San Diego Padres. On Sunday, July 8, the Padres will take on the Braves and the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego will sing the national anthem. Officially dubbed “Out at Petco Park”, the event is designed to be an enjoyable way for members of the LGBT community, our friends and families to support the San Diego Padres and kick off a month of Pride events with America’s favorite pastime.

We need your help. The Padres and San Diego Pride are receiving calls and emails from anti-gay activists questioning the “morality” of allowing the Gay Men’s Chorus to sing the national anthem and of publicly recognizing the Pride organization.

The Out at the Park event is not the first time the Padres have worked with an LGBT organization, but it is the first time they have partnered with San Diego LGBT Pride. That makes the Padres one of only about 15 Major League Baseball teams to publicly support such a group event. This is progress and I would hate to see that progress damaged in any way by anti-gay protest efforts.

Get involved and support Pride, the Padres, the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego and our community. First thing to do is attend the Out at the Park event.

$16 discounted tickets are available on the Pride website at www.sandiegopride.org. The best way to show the Padres that we appreciate their support is to make sure this community event is a success.

Even if you can’t attend the ball game, vocalize your support by getting in touch with the Padres. You have the power to counter any protest that develops. A quick e-note or call to the Padres can go a long way towards personalizing what this event is really about. Let the Padres know that you appreciate the recognition and their selection of the Gay Men’s Chorus. You can call the Padres at (619) 795-5000 or send an email by going online to http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/help/index.jsp?c_id=sd and click on the button labeled “other” to post a comment.

Finally, there is one more thing that we need to take away from this whole issue. Simply put, this is part of the reason why we continue to celebrate Pride. There are people out there who want us to remain invisible and want to diminish us by calling us immoral and degrading. It’s a lot more difficult for people to believe such things when they find out who we are and learn that we have pride in who we are.

The truth of the matter is that attacks such as the one launched against the Out at the Park event reveal more about the attackers than the people being attacked. Be proud that the San Diego Padres are supporting us. Be proud of the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego for representing us. And be proud of who you are.

Ron deHarte

Executive Director, San Diego Pride

Dear Editor:

Rosie O’Donnell sure does get folks bent all out of shape when she speaks her opinion. I do wonder if it is because is a strong , outspoken Lesbian woman. I sill hope that we will overcome our sexist, gender stereotypes , but maybe I’m too optimistic .

I do agree with the rest of your article on AIDS dissenters and their wild ideas on the cause of AIDS.

Gloria Johnson

Dear Editor:

In a letter you published this week, Mark Gabrish Conlan support the position of AIDS denialist by asking several rhetorical questions that he says show that HIV/AIDS science and medicine “simply don’t make logical or rational sense.” But actually the answers to his questions straightforward and entirely consistent with everything we know about HIV and AIDS.

Conlan asks: “Why is a positive test for HIV antibodies presumed to mean that you have an active infection and will get AIDS and die prematurely, when for all other viral diseases antibodies mean immunity?” His question is simply wrong: the presence of antibodies to a virus (or a bacterium) does not necessarily indicate immunity, but only a past immune response. People with herpes and TB antibodies remain susceptible to active outbreaks.

Conlan asks: “Why are condoms said to protect against HIV transmission when, in the great herpes scare of the early 1980’s, people were warned that condoms would not protect them against herpes - caused by a virus larger than HIV?” He doesn’t understand the basic of herpes transmission and prevention. Condoms do provide significant (but not complete) protection from herpes. They are less effective for preventing herpes transmission than for preventing HIV transmission not because of the relative size of the viruses, but because HIV is transmitted sexually by men in semen, and therefore the virus is entirely contained within a properly used condom, while herpes can be transmitted by lesions outside the area covered by latex.

Conlan asks: “Why are HIV antibody-positive test results in the U.S. equally distributed between men and women, when AIDS diagnoses are 75 percent men and 25 percent women?” He doesn’t say where he got his stats, but the reason the numbers of people infected with HIV differ from the number diagnosed with AIDS is that, even without treatment, AIDS takes on average 10 years to develop after infection with HIV. So the population with AIDS today reflects who was infected 8, 12, or even 20 years ago, when more men than women were HIV-positive.

Conlan asks: “Why is AIDS in Africa, whose symptoms, diagnostic criteria and epidemiology are completely different from AIDS in the U.S. and the developed world generally, said to be caused by the same virus and treatable with the same medications?” He’s wrong again. AIDS in Africa isn’t really all that different. People in Africa who have AIDS suffer from opportunistic diseases, including PCP, TB, KS, diarrhea and fungal infections, just like untreated North Americans with AIDS. They test positive for HIV antibodies, high viral loads and reduced T-cell counts, just like untreated North Americans with AIDS. And Africans get HIV the same ways North Americans do—from semen, blood, breast milk, vaginal fluids, and prenatal transmission. Specific epidemiological differences reflect different social, cultural and economic features, for example whether or not male circumcision is practiced.

Mr. Conlan’s illustrates how urgently basic sexual health education and accurate HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment information are needed by the LGBT community.

Jeanne Bergman, Ph.D.

Director of Planning and Policy Research The Center for HIV Law and Policy

Dear Editor:

Pat Sherman’s “AIDS dissidents: blinded by pseudoscience or asking the right questions?” is as balanced a presentation as I have seen, and he deserves much praise for being balanced on a topic where most journalists have eschewed balance. I’m gratified by the space he gave to my views, which he reported with exceptional accuracy, with just one little error I’d like to correct: the 1976 Nobel was given to Gajdusek for the discovery that kuru etc. ARE caused by a lentivirus (the first ever allegedly slow virus) but in 1996 Prusiner got the Nobel for showing they are NOT caused by a lentivirus but by prions.

Sherman’s piece also displays accurately how intemperate and fallacious are J P Moore’s utterances. I don’t know who Moore refers to in saying that dissidents regard all mainstream proponents as malicious or stupid.

As some of Sherman’s piece illustrates, I for one recognize that this is par for the course: medicine and science progress through trial and error, because they are performed by fallible human beings and because advancing knowledge into new territories is difficult and beset by pitfalls. Medical science went wrong over HIV/AIDS just as it has gone wrong over a number of other issues. As all students of the history of medicine and of science know, theories previously held with firm conviction by the overwhelming consensus of experts are periodically shown to be mistaken or misleading to a significant extent. Therefore it is always dangerous for outsiders to trust the experts’ consensus. It is a particular warning when, as with Moore and other defenders of HIV/AIDS theory, they cite “overwhelming evidence” without offering a single specific reference in the scientific literature. My book, which Sherman cites, draws on every publication by the Centers for Disease Control that gives data about HIV rates, and on hundreds of articles in the mainstream literature as well. I challenge anyone to examine those original sources and come to a different conclusion than mine: what HIV tests detect is not an infectious agent.

Henry H. Bauer