ABSTRACT
The explosive increase in reported cases of AIDS in the early 1980s among men who have sex with men (MSM) and subsequently injecting drug users (IDU) in North America and Western Europe – initially with reported doubling times of a few months – created the false perception that AIDS is caused by a very infectious agent. As a result, during the mid-to-late 1980s, there was significant public health fear that the “next wave” of HIV epidemics would occur in heterosexuals following the hundreds of explosive HIV epidemics in MSM and IDU documented throughout the world. Heterosexual HIV epidemics did not materialize in any developed country and this led to the conclusion that perhaps heterosexual AIDS was a myth. 1 Documentation by the late 1980s and early 1990s of heterosexual HIV epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), several Caribbean countries, and a few Asian countries dispelled this myth. However, as of the new millennium, another myth, the myth of the “next waves” of heterosexual HIV epidemics sweeping through low HIV prevalence countries in Asia has been created by UNAIDS and many AIDS “experts.” This myth has been fully accepted by AIDS activists, most policy makers as well as most of the general public. Some of the more zealous AIDS “experts” also predict such dire HIV epidemics in many Middle East and central Asian countries.
