On this section, Callen and Berkowitz elaborate on the multifactorial mannequin to provide a foundation for later purposes of safe sex practices. On the time when Learn how to Have Sex in an Epidemic was written, there was no consensus on the cause of AIDS, however two foremost theories existed: the "new agent concept," which was increasingly the scientific consensus, and the "multifactorial concept," which Callen, Berkowitz and Sonnabend adopted as their foundation for sexual schooling round AIDS transmission prevention. The authors introduce the 2 presiding theories of AIDS transmission and present their arguments for the multifactorial mannequin. Although the multifactorial model had been criticized for failing to account for the sudden appearance of AIDS, the authors use the truth that the rate of CMV infections in urban sexually active gay men rose considerably in last decade as proof of the "new" component that accounts for the speedy increase in AIDS instances. As David France later recounted, the authors actively tried to avoid condescension or arrogance of their writing (even if Callen himself had acknowledged that telling folks the way to have intercourse is inherently an arrogant factor to do), as an alternative making an attempt to determine a dialogue, "queen to queen," between themselves and the people for whom they created the handbook.
