GAY NEWS
"Happy" World AIDS Day? Sobering News From the Gay Prevention Front
By Walter Armstrong
Published Dec 01, 2006
Published Dec 01, 2006
It's World AIDS Day. That means you've already heard the non-news that the epidemic is getting worse all over the planet. You've heard the statistics: 40 million people living with HIV; three million dead this year. While one in four adults in the developing world who need HIV treatment has it, only one in 20 children does.
With so much of the media focus on AIDS in Africa and Asia, you may have missed what may be the year's single-most important news about HIV for gay men in the U.S. It's a study released last summer at Toronto's International AIDS Conference that gives projections of your own risk of getting HIV over the course of your life.
According to the University of Pittsburgh's Ron Stall, one of the nation's leading gay HIV prevention experts, the number of new cases of HIV among gay men in the U.S. has been rising by almost two percent each year since 2001. And that "almost two percent" rate is consistent, Stall says, across every generation—whether you're 20, 40, or 60.
None of that sounds too alarming, right? Two percent or almost is only, say, two gay men out of every 100, after all. Doesn't that mean that 98 are home free? If so, then why does Stall, the big numbers man, go on to claim, "Ongoing incidence rates at this level will yield very high HIV prevalence rates within each generation of gay men"? Is he just being an alarmist?
The answer is no, he's dealing in probabilities. Imagine you're in a room with 99 other gay men. You're all the same age—say, 25 years old. According to current stats, 18 of you already have HIV. With a two percent annual increase, each year two more of you will get infected. By the year 2011, when you're 30, 28 of the 100 men in the room will have HIV. By the time you're 40 or 45, that number will rise to 50 positive, 50 negative.
To put it harshly, a 25-year-old gay man in the U.S. has only a 50 percent probability of reaching the age of 45 and still being HIV negative.
Looking at your risk in this purely statistical way may seem too abstract. After all, it doesn't take into account any lifestyle risk or safety factors. Like if you use condoms. Or if you use crytal meth. Or if you and your boyfriend are both HIV negative and monogamous. All it tells you is the likelihood that, given the extent of the virus in our communities among all age groups, one out of every two of us will have HIV after 25 years. That's not as high a rate as in hardest-hit Africa and Asia, but it's harsh.
And harsh reality checks are a tradition of World AIDS Day. So are slick new HIV prevention campaigns, and this year is no exception. Check out "Look/Listen/Love/Respect" at http://www.loveandrespect.us. Here's the hype from the campaign: "Despite knowing that condoms prevent HIV transmission, many gay men continue to engage in risky and self-destructive behavior," said Dan Carlson, the founder of HIV Forum NYC, who produced the campaign with New York's Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. "As we mark World AIDS Day, we wanted to reframe the conversation among gay men about condom use and redefine what that simple act means."
Be that as it may, these slick videos at least give you the chance to see Susan Sarandon and Whoopie Goldberg—AIDS divas who are still at it after all these years!—talk about barebacking, crystal meth and condoms. World AIDS Day doesn't get any better than that. So click on http://www.loveandrespect.us/home.html, and have a safe and sexy day.
With so much of the media focus on AIDS in Africa and Asia, you may have missed what may be the year's single-most important news about HIV for gay men in the U.S. It's a study released last summer at Toronto's International AIDS Conference that gives projections of your own risk of getting HIV over the course of your life.
According to the University of Pittsburgh's Ron Stall, one of the nation's leading gay HIV prevention experts, the number of new cases of HIV among gay men in the U.S. has been rising by almost two percent each year since 2001. And that "almost two percent" rate is consistent, Stall says, across every generation—whether you're 20, 40, or 60.
None of that sounds too alarming, right? Two percent or almost is only, say, two gay men out of every 100, after all. Doesn't that mean that 98 are home free? If so, then why does Stall, the big numbers man, go on to claim, "Ongoing incidence rates at this level will yield very high HIV prevalence rates within each generation of gay men"? Is he just being an alarmist?
The answer is no, he's dealing in probabilities. Imagine you're in a room with 99 other gay men. You're all the same age—say, 25 years old. According to current stats, 18 of you already have HIV. With a two percent annual increase, each year two more of you will get infected. By the year 2011, when you're 30, 28 of the 100 men in the room will have HIV. By the time you're 40 or 45, that number will rise to 50 positive, 50 negative.
To put it harshly, a 25-year-old gay man in the U.S. has only a 50 percent probability of reaching the age of 45 and still being HIV negative.
Looking at your risk in this purely statistical way may seem too abstract. After all, it doesn't take into account any lifestyle risk or safety factors. Like if you use condoms. Or if you use crytal meth. Or if you and your boyfriend are both HIV negative and monogamous. All it tells you is the likelihood that, given the extent of the virus in our communities among all age groups, one out of every two of us will have HIV after 25 years. That's not as high a rate as in hardest-hit Africa and Asia, but it's harsh.
And harsh reality checks are a tradition of World AIDS Day. So are slick new HIV prevention campaigns, and this year is no exception. Check out "Look/Listen/Love/Respect" at http://www.loveandrespect.us. Here's the hype from the campaign: "Despite knowing that condoms prevent HIV transmission, many gay men continue to engage in risky and self-destructive behavior," said Dan Carlson, the founder of HIV Forum NYC, who produced the campaign with New York's Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. "As we mark World AIDS Day, we wanted to reframe the conversation among gay men about condom use and redefine what that simple act means."
Be that as it may, these slick videos at least give you the chance to see Susan Sarandon and Whoopie Goldberg—AIDS divas who are still at it after all these years!—talk about barebacking, crystal meth and condoms. World AIDS Day doesn't get any better than that. So click on http://www.loveandrespect.us/home.html, and have a safe and sexy day.
