So I'm reading a recent economics paper on sex by Andrew Francis (download pdf here), and he states as a fact that it is thousands of times more likely that a male would get HIV having sex with a man than having sex with a woman.

I do a little googling, and he's right. Of course, I always suspected that, given that proportionally so many more gay men were dying of AIDS than, say, heterosexual men. But I remember the official government statement was that all sex was basically risky. The mainstream media was complicit, as Oprah, US News & World Report, USA Today, ABC's 20/20 all parroted the same line: anyone who has sex is at great risk.

It reminded me of another risk mistatement that has been destructive, the assertion that all tobacco exposure is equally risky. In 1986, the Surgeon General concluded that the use of smokeless tobacco "is not a safe substitute for smoking cigarettes." It has not changed this line.

A panel of experts estimated that the mortality risk posed by oral snuff is at least 90 percent lower than the risk posed by cigarettes. The article notes (see here): Median mortality risks of snuf relative to smoking were estimated to be 2% to 3% for lung cancer, 10% for heart disease, and 15% to 30% for oral cancer.

Risk management is not about enumeration, but prioritization. Everything, at some level of indulgence, is risky. Not noting that anal sex is 1000 times riskier than vaginal sex, or that smokeless tobacco is 10% as risky as cigarettes, misinforms people who need accurate data to make good decisions. Remember the government will lie or omit important qualifications when they see fit, whether the greater good is to avoid stereotyping or something else.