The Nation - News from July 17, 1986

AIDS education and prevention efforts are bypassing the black community, where the majority of those contracting the fatal disease are intravenous drug users and not homosexuals, researchers said. The team from the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta said in a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine that gay community groups had developed a “strong coalition in terms of education” for AIDS victims. The Centers for Disease Control reported 32% of blacks with AIDS are homosexual, compared to 78% of whites. But 43% of black victims were intravenous drug users, compared to 14% of whites.