STEPHEN BURTON
Following the recent panic in the gay press over the American ban on Amyl, Dr. Stephen Burton puts .....
Poppers in perspective
Eighteen months ago I was asked to look into the safety of Poppers (Amyl Nitrite/Butyl Nitrite) by the solicitors representing six men accused of to supplying a noxious substance with intent to harm, injure or annoy". Later on I was one of the the expert witnesses called to their defence in a trial at the Old Bailey.
When first approached I was doing research into the effects of drugs on sleep, and it was a refreshing change of topic. Now, and after reading 300 research papers on poppers, English' (Amyl Nitrite) and ‘American’ (Butyl nitrite and Isobutyl nitrite), and after doing experiments with them on myself, there is a story to be told.
Before chucking over a career in medicine for the loony world of gay publishing no-one could have persuaded me how a body of scientific literature could be so distorted by campaigners (gay and otherwise) with axes to grind. Working for The Pink Paper however, has opened my eyes to the lengths that some will go to, in pursuit of their favourite hobby-horses. Poppers are no exception.
A headline such as "Health Fears Rise As US Bans Poppers", seen by gay men in London last week (Capital Gay), does need to be set in context. No doubt some gay men in the US wanted poppers banned. But did the gay community rise as one? No.
The decision to ban poppers in the US was as a result of a fierce anti-drugs lobby leading to the comprehensive US "Drug Omnibus Act". The decision to include poppers in this legislation was fuelled by certain self-seeking scientists who have been pursuing poppers for 10 or more years as well as politicians sympathetic to a small but vociferous gay anti-poppers lobby.
The main plank of their argument goes as follows: “using poppers causes immune deficiency like that seen with AIDS". Yet, early fears that poppers might cause Kaposi's sarcoma have been found to be groundless, in large well-conducted studies of thousands of gay men. No scientist should be categorical but the evidence just isn't there to show any link at all. At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the early 80’s, and before anyone knew that HIV existed, it was natural to look into the lifestyles of the gay men diagnosed with AIDS for reasons as to why they should be so afflicted.
The first several thousand cases ofr KS did have a very significant history of using poppers. But so did thousands of gay men (and probably millions of high school kids) who haven’t gone on to get KS or any manifestation of AIDS. Why?
Because it is now well known that the difference between those who went on to develop KS and those who did not, is that those who did had had a very significant exposure to semen infected with HIV, mostly due to unprotected anal sex. No-one disputes that some men in New York, or for that matter in San Francisco, enjoyed a period of several years having as much sex as they could, in bath houses and elsewhere. This provided ideal conditions for the rapid spread of all sorts of infections.
Once an infection got into that group it got passed around very quickly. The spread of Hepatitis B (causing liver diseases) or Herpes (causing genital sores) or Syphilis was epidemic long before AIDS arrived.
HIV also got into that group, who knows from where, and because it took between five and ten years to show itself - by causing severe immune deficiency or AIDS - it was widely distributed before anyone could change their sexual practices.
KS itself is just one manifestation of AIDS and may be made more likely by repeated infection with different strains of HIV or by other sexually transmitted diseases like Syphilis or Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection. In fact, KS also occurs rarely in elderly men and has been recorded in patients who have had organ transplants and whose immune systems are suppressed due to drugs.
The common factor is profound immune depression.
KS does not occur in users of poppers who do not have HIV. So the worst thing you can say about poppers is that they make anal sex less traumatic by relaxing the relevant muscles.
That's one of the reasons why they were so popular in the 70's in the US. And, only with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better for everyone had there been much less anal sex, but, NOBODY KNEW ABOUT HIV.
It is pointless to try and put the blame on poppers for the spread of HIV.
Some people need scapegoats, something to blame for the ills of the world and some, unable to explain the random intrusion of HIV into their world, seek to find something, anything, in themselves, to blame for it. Too much 'unsafe sex' I can accept as reason for self blame (however irrational given everyone's ignorance of what was safe) but to blame a drug which has been used for 150 years by countless millions in the treatment of heart conditions and cyanide poisoning isn't supported by the know facts.
All my researches as presented in evidence in the recent Old Bailey trial point to the following conclusions:
1. There is no link between using poppers and acquiring HIV or KS or AIDS, except if using them makes people forget safer sex guidelines.
2. There is no evidence that sniffing poppers causes significant effects on the immune (or defense) systems of the body. T4 cells (the cells attacked by HIV) may be affected by inhaling poppers but then these cells are known to be affected by the time of day or exercise and a hundred other factors including diet.
3. There is no evidence whatsoever for someone developing AIDS or KS as a result of sniffing poppers independent of being infected with HIV.
4. Poppers inhaled to excess can give you a bad headache, or make you feel sick. In combination with alcohol poppers can do even worse, making users vomit or very rarely faint.
5. All the other effects attributed to poppers by their critics, including anemia, collapse and in extreme circumstances death, have been due to enormous misuse, most often by drinking the stuff.
AIDS, or the fear of it, has made puritans of some people and that's OK for them. What isn't OK is vociferous lobbyists with strong beliefs, unsupported by the evidence, calling for changes in the law that would mean people wouldn't be allowed their own decisions over whether or not to use poppers.
A public debate over poppers is called for and I for one would welcome the chance to discuss the relative merits or risks of poppers in public before any more people are panicked into a monastery by scaremongering headlines.
The moral of this story should be Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers.
©The Pink Paper Issue 67 8 April 1989 London, England
