Submitted on: September 8, 1993

By Cheryl Clark
Copley News Service

 SAN DIEGO The question arose again Friday (Sept. 3), especially in
 light of recent news reports. "What is the risk that AIDS can be
 transmitted through lesbian sex?"

 No one really knows, answered Judith Cohen, the opening speaker at
 the University of California at San Diego's Western Regional
 Conference on HIV, AIDS and Women.

 "Given the way the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
 classifies people with AIDS, they will not at this time, nor will
 they ever ... be able to answer this question. If she acquires it
 from another woman, she doesn't fit (the CDC categories)," said
 Cohen, the director of a women's AIDS research project at UC San
 Francisco. "Does it happen? We think it does. How often? Try and
 find out," she said.

 Several conference workshops yesterday focused on the issue,
 following a report last week quoting a Texas physician who said he
 was treating two lesbians infected with the AIDS virus through
 lesbian sex, supposedly the first documented cases.

 Not so, said CDC epidemiologist Susan Chu, interviewed by telephone
 from Atlanta. Chu said the physician was misunderstood. "There was
 only one case that might have qualified, and she had sex with both
 men and women."

 While there have been five reports in medical literature of women
 suspected of becoming infected through sex with women, none have been
 proven, Chu said.

 And among 164 cases of AIDS that the CDC has documented in women who
 reported sexual contact only with other women, 93 percent were also
 intravenous drug users and 7 percent had received blood transfusions,
 both more likely routes for their infection, Chu said. The cases
 were recorded by the CDC through June 1991.

 The problem, said Chu, is that woman-to-woman sexual transmission "is
 hard to prove without fancy DNA testing ... and that's expensive."

 "Women with AIDS who report sexual contact only with other women
 represent a very small portion of the total number of women with AIDS
 in the United States," said her report, published last year in the
 journal AIDS.

 Chu said there is increasing evidence that some women who consider
 themselves lesbians have sex with men and that those men tend to be
 bisexuals. "Those lesbians are going to be at risk," Chu said.

 Women members of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACTUP) and several
 San Diego women's health groups are concerned that public health
 officials overlook the lesbian's risk of getting AIDS because the
 subject is distasteful.

 "We're 12 years into this disease, why aren't they asking the proper
 questions?" said Alicia Zee, a drug and alcohol counselor at Stepping
 Stone, a gay and lesbian recovery program in Hillcrest. "Maybe it is
 low risk right now, but why don't we start looking at this before it
 becomes high risk?"

 Gay and lesbian organizations have teamed up with AIDS Foundation San
 Diego to hold a conference on the issue Sept. 18 at the Gay and
 Lesbian Community Center in Hillcrest.

 AIDS testing forms don't even have a category for a woman who has sex
 with another woman," said Kristie Mills, an HIV drug and alcohol
 counselor for Episcopal Community Services.

 Steve Hart of the county HIV testing program said the form is being
 revised to reflect more types of behavior.

 Chu said she is concerned that "there is so much energy and resources
 in the lesbian community (directed) to preventing transmission of
 AIDS when the serious health problems are drug and alcohol abuse,
 cigarette smoking and getting routine gynecological care."

 "Those are probably bigger, more pervasive problems," acknowledged
 Pam Rahn of Stepping Stone. "But," said Rahn, a bisexual, "that
 doesn't mean we need not worry about AIDS."