Youths Feel Immune From AIDS : Health: In Kokomo, Ind., where parents became hysterical over disease victim Ryan White, many teen-agers discount risk. More education is urged.
Here, as in so many other places, AIDS myths die hard.
This is the city where parents fought to keep Ryan White out of school, fearful that he would spread the disease that eventually killed him. And, today, many of Kokomo’s teen-agers seem to believe they are somehow immune from AIDS.
Just as Kokomo’s fears about AIDS reflected a hysteria found everywhere in the epidemic’s early days, the false sense of security harbored by its teen-agers mirrors a troubling bravado among the nation’s young.
“It might be different if someone around here got AIDS through sex or drugs, but that hasn’t happened so far,” said Carrie Lewis, 16, a sophomore at Kokomo’s Western High School. “Kids think they’re safe, that nothing will happen to them.”
Adolescence is traditionally about testing limits, pressing luck, defying authority. But, as AIDS continues spreading within the heterosexual community, such risk-taking has become an ever more dangerous game.
The federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta so far has reported 670 cases of adolescent AIDS, with the number logged annually rising from 36 in 1985 to 160 in 1990. Although such cases are still relatively rare, doctors say they are alarmed.
Although gay men drastically altered their sexual habits to slow the HIV virus’ spread during the 1980s, several national studies indicate that teen-agers became more sexually active and at younger ages than ever.
The CDC, for example, reported this year that more than half of American females between 15 and 19 had had premarital sex--an increase of about 23% since 1980.
Researchers warn that AIDS statistics may mask the actual risks to these teen-agers because symptoms of the disease, which has a 10-year incubation period, may not show up immediately.
Nearly 7,100 Americans from ages 20 to 24 have been found to have AIDS, and more than 27,000 cases have been found in men and women ages 25 to 29, according to the CDC.
“The kids may be fooling themselves that they’re safe because they don’t see their peers coming down with the disease,” said Dr. Martha Rogers, who heads the CDC’s HIV epidemiology branch. “But, the vast majority of 20- to 24-year-olds with AIDS were infected as adolescents.”
Dawn Marcal, 25, discovered that fact under the most painful of circumstances. Years after reining in a reckless lifestyle that included dabbling in intravenous drugs and multiple sex partners, she unwittingly transmitted AIDS to a treasured daughter, who died at 18 months.
“Most of America, especially middle America, still thinks AIDS is a gay disease,” said Marcal, a San Franciscan who was found to have the disease after her daughter’s birth in 1987. “But I say to them, ‘Look at me. I am AIDS.’ ”
Although the disease most often is associated with blood transfusions, intravenous drug use and gay sex, experts warn that the average American teen-ager living outside a metropolitan area still is at risk.
Half of all reported cases of AIDS in females from ages 13 to 21 were contracted from heterosexual sex, according to studies.
“Most teen-agers feel invulnerable on the AIDS issue,” said Lillian Rubin, a sociologist at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at UC Berkeley. “They’re saying: ‘I only know straight people, who aren’t needle users, who don’t have AIDS. I know who I sleep with. I sleep with the guys and girls in my school.’ ”
“They may be from down the street, but who knows how many times they’ve been around the block,” said Vice Principal Bill Narwald, who took Ryan White under his wing when the eighth-grader was at Western High in the mid-1980s.
The good news is that condom use, which can prevent transmission of the HIV virus, has more than doubled in recent years. Fifty-seven percent of sexually active 15- to 19-year-old males surveyed in 1988 used protection the last time they had intercourse, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York.
Meanwhile, 31% of unmarried 15- to 44-year-old women who have had sexual intercourse at least once said they had modified their behavior because of AIDS, according to a federal report released last month.
Experts attribute this progress to the introduction of AIDS education programs, which are now required for public school students in 33 states and recommended in 16 states.
“We’ve opened up dinner-table dialogue around a lot of taboo subjects, like sex and condoms,” said Dr. Karen Hein, head of the adolescent AIDS program at Montefiore Hospital in New York. “It’s a kind of revolution.”
However, many adults still find sex and AIDS difficult topics to discuss with their teen-agers. It is a tacit admission that their children are or may soon become sexually active, a decision some parents might not sanction.
But AIDS activists say that, with an estimated 1 million pregnancies and 2.5 million cases of sexually transmitted diseases occuring among teen-agers annually, morality must be secondary to safety.
“We have a pending disaster, and some people are still debating whether we should discuss condom use openly,” said Dr. Gary R. Strokash, director of adolescent medicine at Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago.
“We’re seeing more and more cases of adolescent AIDS, and we’re just not prepared,” he said. “We’ve got to find a way to reach young people.”
But teen-agers, who sometimes imagine themselves immortal, are known for ignoring adult admonitions. The list of oft-defied taboos includes not only sex but drugs, smoking, drinking and driving under the influence.
“(We) just keep getting the stuff repeated to us--the same old stuff, over and over,” said Jay Plummer, 18, who has learned about AIDS prevention as part of Western High’s comprehensive program. “It just starts to get real tired.”
Activists are aware of the numbing results of repetition, but they are not willing to let up. Education, many say, must instead go further to deal with compelling issues not yet regularly raised in classrooms or at home.
“We have to go beyond the plumbing, the technical stuff, and help people learn to evaluate their behavior and talk about their decisions,” said Jacqueline D. Forrest, vice president of research at the Guttmacher Institute.
Teen-agers still need help in learning how and when to raise such intimate topics as AIDS with sexual partners. It’s awkward. So teen-agers may duck the whole issue. “They think, ‘I’m safe. It won’t happen to me,’ ” Strokash said. “But AIDS is like Russian roulette. If you get it, that’s it. There’s no second chance. You’re gone.”
