“Scientists don’t really know …” In gay AIDSpeak, that meant that scientists couldn’t prove AIDS was spread by sex, so people shouldn’t take measures to protect themselves. When those same words were spoken with a heterosexual accent, however, they meant that scientists couldn’t prove that AIDS was not spread by casual contagion, therefore people should take any measure possible to protect themselves and society. Both dialects were rooted in the same language of paranoia, one political and the other medical, although they implied drastically different solutions.
