AIDS Views Contradict Specialists

Over the last three years, Dr. Theresa Crenshaw has repeatedly taken public positions on the transmission and control of AIDS that run counter to those of most federal epidemiologists and independent researchers specializing in the disease.

She has suggested that the virus might be transmitted by mosquitoes and has said she is unconvinced that it cannot be passed through casual contact. She has advocated widespread voluntary testing of the general population, including children, for exposure to the AIDS virus.

Crenshaw has also made dire predictions about the extent of what she has called “the pandemic,” doubling the government’s estimate of the number of people who have been exposed and predicting that the disease could kill a quarter of the world’s population--or more.

“Could we be facing the threat of extinction during our lifetime?” she wrote in one leaflet, entitled “Survival or Extinction: The Choice is Ours.” “Even before our children are grown?”

Among the views she has expressed:

- On mosquitoes: “Many experts still say AIDS cannot be spread by insects. However, since the virus has been found in mosquitoes and many other biting insects, and since there are reports of infection from a single needle-stick, logic and common sense suggest reevaluating this position.”

- On casual contact: “It is too early to draw conclusions about this mode of transmission. The AIDS virus has often been compared to the Hepatitis B virus. Hepatitis B can spread through casual contact.”

- On confidentiality laws protecting those who have been infected: “Modify civil rights issues if necessary for health and survival. Don’t let the exercise of the rights of someone who is infected cause someone else to become infected.”

- On condoms: “Saying that use of condoms is ‘safe sex’ is in fact playing Russian roulette. A lot of people will die in this dangerous game.”

- On AIDS education: “The present message, ‘Calm down, don’t panic, but change your sexual behavior,’ will not work psychodynamically. To motivate sexual behavior changes one must alarm and concern people enough to motivate change, then calm them down with an action plan.”

- On the future of the disease: “Our society is in grave danger, not from AIDS, but from the experts who have consistently misread this epidemic . . . from gay leaders who have resisted any measures that might limit or inhibit sexual freedoms; from the conservative right who have fought AIDS education in schools and on television, and from ourselves, who have been unwilling to face reality and change our sexual practices radically enough or rapidly enough.”

Crenshaw has also called for reporting to public health authorities the case of anyone who has been exposed to the virus, whether or not they have come down with the disease, and so-called contact tracing to find and inform their past sexual partners.