AIDS Spreading Rapidly Among Canada's Aboriginals

WINNIPEG, CANADA - AIDS is spreading faster among Canada's aboriginal people than in the general population, and a strong cultural stigma and links to rising drug use make the problem difficult to solve.
One health official compared it last week to the AIDS epidemic in Africa and warned that up to 30 percent of the aboriginal population in the western province of Saskatchewan could die of AIDS within a decade.
Saskatchewan's top health official dismissed that prediction, but said the rapid spread of AIDS in the native population is a growing concern.
Many aboriginals, a broad term that includes Indians, Inuit and Metis, live in poverty and suffer poorer health than most other Canadians. They make up about 3.3 percent of the population, living mainly in western cities, the North and on rural reserves.
Despite their relatively small population, aboriginals accounted for almost one-quarter of Canada's reported AIDS cases in 2006 for which ethnicity was known, double the rate six years earlier, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Intravenous drug use, especially among women, is the cause of more than half the infections with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which leads to AIDS. Canadian non-aboriginal infections are mostly linked to unsafe sex.
Aboriginals with HIV infections also tend to be younger than other infected Canadians and more often women.
"(It's) partly because of the vulnerabilities of that group -- (especially) if they're addicted and dependent on the sex trade for their income," said Dr. Moira McKinnon, chief medical health officer for Saskatchewan.
INFECTION RATE ON RISE
The rate of HIV infection in Saskatchewan has risen rapidly among natives, McKinnon said. The province of 1 million people, had 174 new HIV cases last year, up 40 percent from 2007. Sixty-five percent of the new cases were aboriginals.
An estimated 73,000 Canadians were infected with HIV as of 2007, according to the United Nations AIDS agency. Worldwide, 33 million people had the HIV virus as of 2007, with almost one-third in southern Africa.
The spread of the AIDS virus in Canada is most acute among young aboriginal people who have moved from rural reserves to cities, said Ken Clement, chief executive of the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network.
Rates of diabetes and tuberculosis are also higher among aboriginals than in the general population, causing HIV infection to become fatal more quickly, Clement said.
Some aboriginals, once infected, are reluctant to use HIV drugs. "It's scary and a real concern," Clement said. "HIV becomes another layer of their disease."
A strong stigma about AIDS within aboriginal circles can also discourage testing and treatment, said Art Zoccole, a gay aboriginal man who is infected with HIV.
"Once you get outside the urban centers, I find the stigma still exists," said Zoccole, 57, who lives in Toronto. "The reason is the lack of information."
It all adds up to a problem without a one-size-fits-all solution, said Phat Ha, public health policy analyst for the Assembly of First Nations (AFN). Most government attempts to control the spread of AIDS center on safe sex, he said .
"There's a large portion (of the population) that's not being addressed, in particular the injection junkies," Ha said.
Saskatchewan will soon take steps to increase access to testing and anti-viral drugs, McKinnon said. She hopes to see the trend to rising HIV cases reversed as quickly as it arose.
"I'm optimistic that within a couple of years, we'll see those figures go down," she said.
from Reuters

Challenges Ahead In Fight Against AIDS

BALI, INDONESIA - Leading health experts on Monday called for repeal of outdated laws criminalizing prostitution and homosexuality so that people suffering from HIV/AIDS or at risk from the disease could get medical treatment.
"The main challenge is overcoming the whole issue of stigma and discrimination, repealing of outdated laws and legislation that countries have got," Prasada Rao, director of UNAIDS Asia Pacific regional support team, said on the margins of an HIV/AIDS conference.
Rao and other experts, kicking off a four-day meeting, said that while progress has been made in research and getting people treated for AIDS, huge challenges lie ahead and much more needs to be done.
"All this progress is not meaningful if we don't address the stigma and discrimination in this region. Young children (whether infected themselves or have family members who are infected) or are still being evicted from schools," Rao told the conference.
"This must change. Without this, progress is not possible," he added.
After HIV/AIDS was first identified in the early 1980s it unleashed fear and a strong wave of prejudice against high-risk groups such as gay and bisexual men and prostitutes, but little appears to have changed after more than 20 years.
Everywhere around the world, criminalization of behavior involving illicit drug use, sex work and sex between men is seriously hampering effective prevention and support programs, according to experts working to help these people.
"For gay men, we need to reach out to these people but if their behavior is criminalized, they are not going to come to you and say hey I need help. This is a classic case of a clash between public health and public security," said Loretta Wong, who heads the Hong Kong-based help group AIDS Concern.
"If they don't get access to services and treatment, their health cant be monitored, they wont get tested. They will instead be driven underground and there will be the risk of infections increasing," she added.
More Treatment, Money Needed
The conference also heard strong calls for more access to treatment. Women and children were particularly left out of the loop, experts said.
"We are supposed to be achieving universal access by 2010. We are not going to make these goals particularly in treatment, said David Cooper, professor of medicine and director at the National Center in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research in Sydney.
Although about 3 million people were receiving drugs to control HIV by the end of 2007, or nearly 950,000 more compared with the end of 2006, only 31 percent of people who were in need of drugs were getting them.
Cooper said children and pregnant women in low and middle-income countries need better and adequate drugs.
"There is incontrovertible new evidence that treating women with antiretroviral therapy in pregnancy and during their breastfeeding period will almost eliminate HIV infection in their infants."
"But we are not getting access to these women and we are not treating them with proper antiretroviral therapy. We are just giving them single-dose drugs," Cooper said.
from Reuters

Cultivated For AIDS Victims, Laguna Beach Garden Is Missing Its Keeper

LAGUNA BEACH - The small patch of flowers serves as a reminder. It commemorates lives lost and souls remembered. The ashes of 50 or so are scattered or buried there.
But the freshly turned topsoil and budding sweet alyssum in the modest garden on the Laguna Beach bluff are deceiving: The gardener is missing.
Michel Martenay nurtured this little spot for more than 20 years, tugging weeds and planting perennials on his own time with his own money. He installed stone cherubs and lined the dirt with heart-shaped rocks gathered from the beach below.
Now, the man who cultivated this memorial to those struck down by ailments such as AIDS, which ravaged the city's once-vibrant gay community some two decades ago, is himself battling the disease.
"Every time I cry, because I would like to take care of it again, see my garden," Martenay says, his so-blue eyes brimming, his head in his hands. Instead, he spends most days in an Anaheim hospice. The 25 pills he's supposed to swallow every morning make him sick; he sheds pounds from his hollowed-out frame. Unable to work, he worries about money but tries to stay positive about the future.
He spends his days feeding the songbirds and chasing cats and pigeons from a birdbath in the hospice courtyard. The fuchsia bougainvillea climbing the iron fence is no substitute for his Garden of Peace and Love.
Finding his calling
The native Parisian first visited Laguna Beach more than 25 years ago. He'd broken up with a boyfriend. A neighbor had suggested the pretty city hugged by canyons and waves. He was smitten.
Martenay walked everywhere, through town, along the sand. He stumbled upon a forlorn tangle of weeds, rubbish and beer bottles where he was told the ashes of two strangers were buried.
"This garden, nobody take care," says Martenay in his thick French accent, puffing on the Marlboro Lights he loves. "I feel sorry for them." Thirty-nine trash bags later, he'd found his calling.
"People ask me why I do that. I say, because there is two guys buried there," Martenay says. "I do that with my heart."
A landscaper by trade, Martenay would visit the garden in the mornings and evenings, bringing all kinds and colors of donated and purchased flowers.
For several years he led a Christmas Eve candlelight vigil, honoring the memory of the dead. It drew crowds: "The people was coming crying, laughing, smoking joints." A heartbroken man bought a cherub statue to honor his dead lover. The garden became a touchstone for those who had lost loved ones, particularly to AIDS.
Next door to the former home of the storied gay nightclub the Boom Boom Room, the garden blossomed at the center of Laguna's gay culture.
A treasured spot
Former Laguna Beach Mayor Robert Gentry recalls when AIDS first hit the city in the 1980s: "Everybody was scared to death. People were wearing masks." He was ushered into businesses' back rooms when he discussed the disease.
"Laguna Beach is different today because of HIV," said Gentry, who was mayor from 1982 to 1994. During that time, he lost his partner to AIDS. Laguna "lost dozens and dozens of community leaders and activists and upstanding citizens, and that changed the city."
Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who also lost a longtime partner to AIDS, considers the garden a "sacred spot." He met his late partner on that very block and used to spend weekends in Laguna's historic gay core.
The Garden of Peace and Love, as Martenay dubbed it, "had great significance to many of us who've been through the AIDS epidemic," Rosendahl said. "I would go there and pray literally in my meditative way, and remember people who have passed on.
"I'll never overcome it," he said of his loss, one that's shared by many others. "It will always be in my heart forever -- the pain and suffering we went through as a people."
The city recognized how meaningful the patch of blooms had become to the community, gay and straight. People would stop there to reflect, leave mementos, or scatter or bury the ashes of those they'd lost. The city's HIV committee provided access to a city water line to sustain the garden after the Boom would no longer allow use of its water supply.
"Michel was doing the city a favor," said Jim Spreine, a former Laguna Beach police chief who chaired the committee. "You know he does this because he loves his fellow man."
Martenay became a fixture, always puttering on that seaside bluff, talking to homeless people wandering by or rich couples meandering down the hill. He was a social maven, a tour guide, a devoted groundskeeper.
Eventually, a plaque went up at the garden honoring those afflicted by AIDS. But the gardener says the spot is for everyone, "poor, rich, whatever." With flowers always blooming and constant visitors, Martenay says, those resting there are never alone.
Community effort
About five months ago, Martenay grew weak. The 48-year-old found out he, too, had AIDS. He was in and out of the hospital. Visits to the garden tapered off. He was no longer strong enough to haul flats of flowers down the steep stairs or water vigilantly. He moved to Anaheim, where he could receive nursing care; with no car, he was separated from the plot of land he loved.
Friends stepped in. Jimmy Graesser's home overlooks the Garden of Peace and Love. He knew how much Martenay would worry about his beloved plants, so Graesser started watering when he could. Another neighbor, Joe Nygaard, pitched in, weeding and watering, clearing out dead stalks.
"I've adopted it, it's adopted me," Nygaard said of the spot. Digging in the dirt is "my way of encouraging him not to give up on his life." He treasures the pair of clippers Martenay gave him on a recent trip back; friends bring Martenay to the garden for occasional visits.
Community members organized a cleanup effort over the summer, planting dazzling maroon and gold day lilies, white iceberg roses and red geraniums, all to the back beat of the Beatles and the roaring surf. In clearing the soil, they unearthed plastic bags and canisters of ashes, plus a dirt-caked angel and stuffed bear; the discoveries were tucked carefully back underground.
"Why let his legacy go down the tubes?" asked John Madison, owner of Madison Square & Garden Cafe in Laguna, sweating with effort, as he helped plant the flowers he'd donated.
The community has rallied "to pick up where he left off," longtime Laguna resident Patrick Stanton, 50, said as he cleared out the undergrowth from around a favorite bench. "There's a lot of pain and a lot of tears, also a lot of love and a lot of smiles" in this patch of earth, he said, adding, "It's fitting that it should be beautiful."
A Labor Day fundraiser pays for weekly visits from a professional gardener. Another fundraiser and cleanup day, and beautification measures such as new signs, are planned for the fall.
And yet, for Martenay, the outpouring of help is bittersweet.
"It's very good. I'm very happy," he says wistfully. "But it's too bad -- because it's not me."
Instead, he shuffles between bed and chair and courtyard at the hospice, sleeping often and missing his garden. Sometimes, if he stands outside at night, he can see the fireworks at Disneyland.
On his nightstand sits a single magenta orchid that just lost its exotic bloom. Lately he's planted mums and begonias in the courtyard outside his room. The two-day effort left him worn out the rest of the week. He hopes to return to Laguna Beach, to the garden, while there's still time.
And after that, he has a particular spot in mind: at the foot of one of the garden's little angels, overlooking the sea.
from The Los Angeles Times

AIDS Prevention Having An Effect

Updated federal estimates of the annual number of new HIV infections in the United States, released yesterday, reveal that although the AIDS epidemic here is worse than previously thought, prevention efforts appear to be having some effect.
Even though the number of Americans living with HIV has risen by more than a quarter-million people since 1998 -- largely because of life-extending antiretroviral drugs -- the number of new cases each year has declined slightly over that period. That suggests that a person's likelihood of transmitting the virus to someone else is substantially lower now than it was a decade ago.
The new, if indirect, evidence that prevention programs are paying off was one of the few encouraging findings in an update on the American AIDS epidemic released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the eve of the 17th International AIDS Conference, in Mexico City.
"Over 95 percent of people living with HIV are not transmitting to someone else in a given year," said David R. Holtgrave, an expert on AIDS prevention at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. "What that says is the transmission rate has been kept very low by prevention efforts."
Those include targeting public health messages to high-risk groups, promoting widespread AIDS testing, and getting quick medical care for newly diagnosed cases, which in most cases lowers the person's infectiousness.
The CDC spends about $750 million a year on AIDS prevention. The main finding of its report is that HIV incidence in 2006 -- the latest year for which data are available -- was 56,300 new cases of infection. That is 40 percent higher than the previous government estimate of 40,000, but statistical back calculation suggests that HIV incidence has been unchanged since about 2000.
The more accurate estimate was possible for two reasons. A new testing method lets researchers detect infections that are less than six months old -- which is more quickly than before. New federal regulations also are pushing states to collect data on new HIV infections and not just new AIDS diagnoses.
By the time AIDS is diagnosed, the infection has severely damaged the immune system, making the person vulnerable to unusual infections and cancers. This generally occurs eight to 11 years after infection, assuming that there is no treatment with antiretroviral drugs, which can prolong life for many more years.
In December, The Washington Post reported that the CDC was revising HIV incidence upward to 50,000 to 60,000 cases a year. Yesterday's announcement -- and the publication of a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association -- is the first official acknowledgment of the new, higher estimate.
"These data corroborate what many of us suspected -- that the epidemic is worse than we thought. However, it doesn't seem to be getting worse," said Jennifer Kates, director of HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington.
The CDC's portrait of the American AIDS epidemic today shows that gay and bisexual men -- especially those who are young or black -- and their female partners are at particular risk.
In 2006, 73 percent of new HIV infections were in men, 53 percent were acquired through homosexual intercourse, and 45 percent were in African Americans. The incidence rate -- the number of infections per 100,000 people -- was seven times higher in blacks and three times higher in Hispanics than in whites. It was highest in people in their 30s, although people younger than 30 accounted for nearly 34 percent of new infections.
The new study also sketches a 30-year picture of how the epidemic has evolved.
Annual incidence peaked in 1985 at 130,000 infections, dipped to 49,000 in the early 1990s, rose to 58,000 in 1998 and has stabilized at about 56,000 a year.
The number of new of HIV cases acquired through drug injection fell by 80 percent over that period through reduced needle sharing by drug users and, in some places, needle-exchange programs. Infections acquired through homosexual sex, which also peaked in the early 1980s, fell to a low in the early 1990s but have risen steadily since then.
The epidemic in the black community is distinctly different from the national epidemic.
From 2001 to 2005, 38 percent of the new diagnoses in African Americans were in women, and 46 percent of new infections overall were from heterosexual contact. Among whites during the same period, 16 percent of new infections were in women, and 16 percent were from heterosexual transmission.
About half of the CDC's HIV prevention budget targets the black community, said Kevin Fenton, who heads those activities at the agency. He said, however, that the rising HIV incidence in gay men, and in young black gay men especially, is evidence that prevention campaigns have "not reached all those who need it."
Statistics compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation show that 4 percent of the $23 billion the U.S. government is spending this year on all HIV-AIDS activities (including research, medical care and overseas programs) goes toward prevention.
According to a paper published last year in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the CDC's budget for AIDS prevention in 2006 was only 5 percent higher than it was in 1990.
from The Washington Post

HIV On The Rise With Young Gay Men

NEW YORK - For years he had numbed his pain and fear with drugs, alcohol and anonymous sex. But in a flash of clarity one day, when the crystal meth was wearing off, Javier Arriola dragged himself to a clinic to get an H.I.V. test, years after he stopped using condoms.
He knew the answer before he received the results, but it was far worse than he thought: At age 29, he had full-blown AIDS.
He had planned to have a party for his 30th birthday. Instead he was thinking of hanging himself in his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.
“There were feelings of terror, like when you were a little kid and there’s that thing that terrifies you,” he said. “This was it. The worst nightmare, and I brought this onto myself.”
The number of new H.I.V. infections in men under 30 who have sex with men has increased sharply in New York City in the last five years, particularly among blacks and Hispanics, even as AIDS deaths and overall H.I.V. infection rates in the city have steadily declined.
New figures from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene show that the annual number of new infections among black and Hispanic men who have sex with men rose 34 percent between 2001 and 2006, and rose for all men under 30 who have sex with men by 32 percent.
At a time when the number of new cases among older gay men is dropping — by 22 percent in New York City during the same period — AIDS experts are bearing down on what they say is a worrisome and perplexing growth of H.I.V. infection among young men like Mr. Arriola.
So far, they say, the significant factors feeding the trend appear to be higher rates of drug use among younger men, which can fuel dangerous sex practices, optimism among them that AIDS can be readily treated, and a growing stigma about H.I.V. among gays that keeps some men from revealing that they are infected. There has also been a substantial increase in the number of new infection cases among young white men who have sex with men, but still that group had fewer new cases in 2006: 100, compared with 228 among blacks and 165 among Hispanics.
The rising rates for young men in New York City come as federal health officials acknowledge that infection rates nationwide, while flat, may be substantially higher than previously thought because of underreporting.
The highest rates of H.I.V. infection nationally are among gays, blacks and Hispanics, with a recent trend toward a younger infected population mirroring New York City’s experience, according to AIDS researchers, who say they are concerned that the country’s infection rates over all have not declined in the past 10 years.
“It’s really unconscionable that we haven’t had a decrease in new infections in the past decade in the United States,” said Wafaa El-Sadr, chief of infectious diseases at Harlem Hospital Center and a professor of public health at Columbia University. “It’s not anymore in the headlines; many people think it’s gone away, and it hasn’t gone away.”
AIDS activists and medical providers say the rates among young men could signal a new wave of the disease.
“Unless you start pulling it apart, unless you start looking at really addressing this and talking honestly, unless you start talking about it in a real way,” said Soraya Elcock, deputy director for policy at Harlem United Community Aids Center, in a neighborhood that has one of the highest infection rates in the city, “we’ll be here in another 20 years having the same conversation.”
As a young, black gay man, Lynonell Edmonds says it seems like a miracle that he has not contracted the AIDS virus. Before he turned 20, he had a haunting realization: in his group of 20 close gay friends, he was the only one without H.I.V.
Mr. Edmonds, now 25, does outreach work for the Harlem AIDS center, trolling Craigslist and other online meeting spots as a “sexpert,” encouraging men to be tested. He and a crew of outreach workers also go to gay nightclubs late at night, with a van carrying H.I.V. tests that can be conducted on the spot. The crew parks the van, which has no obvious signs of its mission, on the street. When they go into the clubs, they make conversation and delicately inquire whether a clubgoer would like to take the test.
Mr. Edmonds said that for many gay black men there is a sense that getting the virus is almost inevitable.
“A lot of guys say, ‘I’m going to get it anyway,’” Mr. Edmonds said.
Mr. Edmonds and other gay men say the stigma of being infected with H.I.V. is growing, and may be greater now than it was in the 1990s, when the AIDS epidemic became a unifying cause, a shared tragedy for gay men.
“I call it, ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’” Mr. Edmonds said. “People are not asking — it’s like it’s an offensive question.”
Kyle, who found out that he had the virus two years ago, at the age of 23, said he had grown weary of what he called “pity dates,” men who agreed to go out with him after he revealed he was infected, but had no intention of pursuing a relationship. He said that out of about 10 men he had dated in the last two years, only one — who was, at 40, the oldest — was willing to go beyond pity dates.
“They blame you and want nothing to do with you; they put you at the end of the line,” said Kyle, who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used because he said he believed his condition would hurt him professionally. “The older generation sees AIDS as a tragedy, the younger generation sees it as self-destructive behavior.”
He said he was infected by someone who did not reveal that he had the virus until after they had unprotected sex.
For Mr. Arriola, who struggled with being molested as a child, the H.I.V. diagnosis put him at rock bottom, he said.
He continued to use drugs for several more months, but then, as his suicide plan was becoming an obsession, he called a friend who was a recovering addict. He got clean and sober, joined a 12-step group, started going to therapy and has slowly pieced his life back together.
“For me today, I’ve done a lot of work to accept myself. I don’t drink and drug, I meditate, there’s a lot of visualization of the person I want to be,” he said. “A lot of it is acceptance. I’m 32, I’m Latin, I’m gay and I have H.I.V. And I don’t feel bad about it. It’s very, very important for me to not feel shame about this.”
As the face of the epidemic grows younger, city health officials acknowledge that their efforts — including a widespread condom distribution program, new investments in education programs at places including churches, and more availability of H.I.V. testing — are falling short.
“It leaves us a little bit scratching our heads: What is it that is going on?” said Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker. “Something clearly is not working, and it’s literally about life or death.”
The city, which has the highest number of AIDS cases in the nation, about 100,000, and one of the highest H.I.V. infection rates, according to the health department, has made great strides in bringing down H.I.V. rates among intravenous drug users and pregnant women. The department, which is giving out three million condoms a month in a program begun last year, has also recently announced several efforts to expand rapid testing, which provides results within a day.
The city’s health commissioner, Thomas R. Frieden, said in an interview that the increasing rates among younger men was being driven by stubbornly high rates of substance abuse, involving drugs like crystal methamphetamine and cocaine, which not only reduce inhibitions but can also lead to “hypersexuality”: extended periods of sexual activity, potentially with multiple partners.
Dr. Frieden also said that another likely explanation was “treatment optimism,” and the many messages gay men receive through AIDS drug advertisements that people like Mr. Arriola can live long and normal lives.
“People who grew up watching their friends die of AIDS are a lot more careful than those who didn’t,” said Dr. Frieden, who said he cared for large numbers of AIDS patients in his earlier medical practice.
He said the department was planning to begin a new H.I.V. prevention campaign aimed at younger men, and a new marketing strategy for their condom campaign later this year. “When’s the last time we saw someone with lesions walking through Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen?” said Victoria Sharp, director of the Center for Comprehensive Care, which is currently providing medical care and other services to 3,000 H.I.V. patients at Roosevelt Hospital and in Harlem. “You don’t see it, and we haven’t seen it since the mid-1990s, so there is a whole generation or two who have grown up without seeing the physical manifestations.”
Health officials said they were also concerned about the growing number of patients receiving concurrent diagnoses of both H.I.V. and AIDS, after waiting too long to be tested. And while some policymakers say more aggressive testing could partly explain the higher infection rates, experts say one in four people with H.I.V. do not know they are infected, so the actual rates could be much higher.
Since receiving the AIDS diagnosis, Mr. Arriola, now 32, has developed a large group of sober friends, become a licensed real estate broker, repainted his apartment — all things that seemed impossible to imagine in the darkness of his drug use and when he learned he had the disease.
Then, he said he would look in the mirror and see the worthless person he believed he was. “I won’t make it to 35,” he would say.
But these days, with the antiviral drugs he takes, about five pills a day, his health is good, he said. Around his apartment, he has posted upbeat messages to himself, like the one on his mirror, where he has written “thank you.”
On the refrigerator he has a list of goals: “Write a book, own New York City property, spread love, own a business (20 million), get a college degree, run a triathlon, have a family (partner, car with driver and kids) and 190 pounds (muscle).”
from The New York Times

HIV-Positive Navy Priest Accused Of Sexual Misconduct

An HIV-positive Navy chaplain and Catholic priest who allegedly had consensual and non-consensual sex with other military men without disclosing his condition will face a court-martial, military officials said Tuesday.
The court-martial of Lt. Cmdr. John Thomas Matthew Lee, 42, will begin on Thursday at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va.
The Archdiocese of Washington, where Lee was ordained in 1993, received allegations of sexual misconduct in June and subsequently “removed his faculties to perform Mass,” said Susan Gibbs, a diocesan spokeswoman. He also was relieved of his military duties in June, though military officials would not disclose his current duty status or unit.
As of Tuesday night, Lee was a patient at National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md. When reached by phone in his hospital room, he declined to comment on the upcoming court-martial.
“No thank you, no thank you. I don’t wish to talk,” he said, before abruptly hanging up.
The five charges Lee is facing include allegations of sodomy, aggravated assault, indecent assault, fraternization and conduct unbecoming a military officer, according to a statement issued by the Marine Corps officials Tuesday night.
The Marine Corps did not offer any details regarding the victims in the case. Sources said the sexual partners in question are all men.
Sources said Lee has tested positive for HIV, which could explain the aggravated assault charges. In cases dating back to 1987, military prosecutors have brought criminal charges for HIV-positive troops who have unprotected sex and fail to inform their partners. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in 1991 approved the use of the aggravated assault charge in such cases.
Lee served as a chaplain at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., from 2003 to 2006, and then he was transferred to Quantico, according to military records.
From April 2001 to September 2003, Lee was stationed in Gaeta, Italy, with Naval Forces Europe, 6th Fleet Detachment, and on the guided-missile cruiser Port Royal from 1998 to 2001, records show.
Lee grew up near Philadelphia and graduated from the seminary St. Charles Borromeo in Wynnewood, Pa., in 1987, Navy records show.
A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese for the Military Services declined to comment on the case. A spokeswoman from the Naval Academy also declined to comment Tuesday night.
More than 25 priests working in the military diocese have faced allegations of sexual misconduct in the past 30 years.
“We believe that the problem may be worse in the military than in other dioceses,” said David Clohessy, the national director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a victim’s advocacy group.
“For a sex offender priest, the military is very attractive because of the transience of military families and the even greater authority and trust that comes with having two titles — both a priest and an officer,” Clohessy said.
The Archdiocese for the Military Services has one of the largest member populations in the United States, and its geography spans the globe.
from Navy Times

AIDS Victims Buried Alive

New Guinea - Marabe, who spent five months carrying out an AIDS awareness campaign in the remote Southern Highlands of the South Pacific nation, said she had seen five people buried alive.
One was calling out "Mama, Mama'' as the soil was shovelled over his head, said Ms Marabe, who works for a volunteer organisation called Igat Hope, Pidgin English for I've Got Hope.
"One of them was my cousin, who was buried alive,'' she said.
"I said, 'Why are they doing that?' And they said, 'If we let them live, stay in the same house, eat together and use or share utensils, we will contract the disease and we too might die'.''
Villagers had told her it was common for people to bury AIDS victims alive.
Ms Marabe appealed to the Government and aid agencies to ensure the HIV/AIDS awareness program in cities and towns was extended to the rural areas, where ignorance about the disease was widespread.
Women accused of being witches have been tortured and murdered by mobs holding them responsible for the apparently inexplicable deaths of young people stricken by the epidemic, officials and researchers say.
A recent United Nations report said PNG was facing an AIDS catastrophe, accounting for 90 per cent of HIV infections in the Oceania region.
HIV diagnoses had risen by around 30 per cent a year since 1997, leaving an estimated 60,000 people living with the disease in 2005.
from The Herald Sun

Washing Penis May Raise H.I.V. Risk

A study in Uganda has come up with a surprising finding about sex and H.I.V. Washing the penis minutes after sex increased the risk of acquiring H.I.V. in uncircumcised men.
The sooner the washing, the greater the risk of becoming infected, the study found. Delaying washing for at least 10 minutes after sex significantly lowered the risk of H.I.V. infection, Dr. Fredrick E. Makumbi reported on July 25 at an International AIDS Society Conference in Sydney, Australia.
The researchers do not have a precise explanation for the findings, which challenge common wisdom and the teaching of many infectious disease experts who urge penile cleansing as part of good genital hygiene. Health experts have suggested that washing the penis after sex could prevent potentially infectious vaginal secretions from entering the body through the uncircumcised penis.
Washing the penis after sex is common in Africa. To determine whether washing could be recommended as an alternative to male circumcision, Dr. Makumbi’s team from the Makerere University Institute of Public Health studied 2,552 uncircumcised men in the Rakai district of Uganda.
The men, ages 15 to 49, were uncircumcised and not H.I.V. infected when they enrolled. Eighty-three percent said they washed with all sex partners.
The researchers asked about when and how the men washed after intercourse at enrollment and 6, 12 and 24 months later, including whether they washed with or without cloths.
Because of a slip-up, the researchers did not ask details of how the cleansing was done or directly about using soap, said Dr. Ronald H. Gray, a co-author from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Some soaps used in Africa are more irritating than those used elsewhere.
Men who washed within three minutes had a 2.3 percent risk of H.I.V. infection compared with 0.4 percent among those who delayed washing for 10 or more minutes. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases paid for the study.
The washing analysis was a secondary part of a study undertaken to determine the effectiveness of male circumcision against H.I.V. infection. Earlier reports had shown that circumcision was protective.
One message from the study, Dr. Gray said, “is that there ought to be a little time left for postcoital cuddling before you go and wash.”
“Don’t just finish and jump out of bed,” he said.
Dr. Makumbi and other AIDS experts said they did not know why the washing practice increased vulnerability to H.I.V. infection, but offered various explanations. One is that the acidity of vaginal secretions may impair the ability of the AIDS virus to survive on the penis. Delayed cleansing — and longer exposure to the vaginal secretions — may then reduce viral infectivity.
Another is that use of water, which has a neutral pH, may encourage viral survival and possible infectivity.
H.I.V. apparently needs to be in a fluid to cross the mucosa to infect cells, Dr. Gray said. If the H.I.V.-contaminated fluid dries, its infectivity may decrease. Adding water could resuspend H.I.V. to make it more infectious.
The study findings are counterintuitive, said Dr. Merle A. Sande, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Washington in Seattle, and “show why you have to do the studies, because until you do them, you just don’t know.”
Dr. Sande, who was not involved in the study, said, “There is still so much we don’t understand about the complex factors that influence H.I.V. transmission in the genital tract, but this important study will help.”
He also is president of the Academic Alliance Foundation, a group that trains health workers to treat AIDS and other infectious diseases in Uganda.
from The New York Times

Tonsils May Help Transmit HIV During Oral Sex

The tonsils might serve as a passageway through which HIV enters the body, suggests an analysis of cells from the mouth and throat.
Researchers stress that the risk of acquiring HIV through oral sex is far too low to warrant preventive tonsillectomies. But they say the finding might have implications for preventing transmission of the virus from HIV-infected mothers to their children through breastfeeding.
Niki Moutsopoulos at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Bethesda, Maryland, US, and her colleagues examined gum tissues taken from dental patients to make room for dental crowns, and tonsils taken from eight individuals as part of a treatment for sleep apnoea, a breathing disorder. "They were pretty much going to throw them out if I didn't use them for my research," Moutsopoulos says of the tissue samples.
With the help of specially designed antibody molecules, the team was able to determine the level of various proteins within these tissues.
About 12% of the tonsil cells tested positive for the protein CD4, which sits on the surface of immune cells that are particularly vulnerable to infection by the virus. By comparison, less than 4% of the gum cells contained this protein.
Moutsopolous and her teammates also conducted a genetic analysis of the tissue samples, using special probes that bind to specific DNA sequences. This experiment revealed that the CXCR4 gene was 11 times more active in the tonsils than in the gum samples. The gene codes for a protein, also called CXCR4, that also helps HIV infect immune cells.
Condoms protect
The scientists found further evidence that the tonsils are perhaps more susceptible to HIV infection that other oral areas, including the cheek lining and floor of the mouth.
The new findings provide biological data to complement clinical and epidemiological evidence suggesting that HIV can – in exceptional cases – spread through oral sex, according to John Greenspan, director of the AIDS Research Institute at the University of California in San Francisco, US. "It's a further piece of the jigsaw puzzle," he told New Scientist.
But he and others note that while HIV transmission can occur through oral sex, it appears to happen very rarely. Experts have estimated that at most 4 out of every 10,000 oral sex exposures result in infection, compared with 1 out of every 200 to 1000 episodes of genital contact.
For this reason, researchers suggest people should use condoms to protect themselves from acquiring HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases through oral sex. Undergoing a tonsillectomy to remove the tonsils would be too drastic a measure based on current evidence, they add. "I think that would be a stretch," says Moutsopoulos. "We can't go taking out every tissue that HIV could pass through."
Probiotic treatments
She adds, though, that if future studies bear out a link between tonsils and HIV transmission, there could be implications for blocking the spread of the virus from mother to child in parts of the world where infant formula and antiretroviral drugs are in short supply. Scientists have estimated that a child has a 15% chance of acquiring the virus through breastfeeding within the first year of life.
Greenspan notes that some scientists have started investigating whether probiotic treatments – which promote the growth of healthful bacteria – might reduce the transmission of HIV to very young children through the oral cavity and gastrointestinal tract.
Moutsopoulos stresses that the tonsils – which were removed routinely up until the late twentieth century – are now seen as a first line of defence in the immune system, alerting the body to potentially dangerous foreign particles. For this reason, she does not believe there is enough evidence to warrant their removal as part of a prophylactic measure against HIV transmission.
from New Scientist

Actors to Get HIV Tests For New Campaign

Regina King, Howard Hesseman and Jimmy Jean-Louis of NBC's "Heroes" are among a group of performers getting HIV tests next week to raise awareness of the spread of the virus in black communities.
They will be screened Monday in front of cameras at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) headquarters in Los Angeles as part of a new campaign called "1 in a Million." The goal is to motivate 1 million black Americans to get tested for HIV/AIDS by Dec. 1, 2008.
"Actors are blessed with the gift of voice, and people listen to what they have to say," SAG president Alan Rosenberg said Friday in a statement. Rosenberg hopes others will take the "message to heart" and follow their lead.
Other celebrity participants include Hill Harper ("CSI: NY"), musical stage star Sheryl Lee Ralph, Gloria Reuben of the HBO movie "Life Support" and former "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" star Tatyana Ali.
According to the statement announcing the campaign, AIDS is the leading cause of death for black women between the ages of 25 and 34, and up to 46 percent of black gay men are estimated to be HIV-positive.
"AIDS in America today is a black disease," said Phil Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute. "Nobody wants to talk about that, and nobody wants to own that. That silence is killing us."
Besides SAG, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Artists for a New South Africa and the Black AIDS Institute are involved in the "1 in a Million" drive.
from The Associated Press

If You've Got HIV, America Doesn't Want You

"I have HIV," Biagio, a bartender at Escape in Soho tells me, so "I can't ever visit America." He's right, unless he puts his anti-retroviral drugs in unlabeled bottles and hopes immigration control doesn't stop him.
A 1993 law bans all HIV-positive would-be visitors from coming to the U.S. except under special circumstances. The law was put on the books at a time when HIV wasn't well understood and paranoia ran high. It's lingered for over a decade now, leaving people like Biagio and his friends feeling like toxins. Biagio tried to visit Los Angeles a year ago; it would be his first visit to the U.S. But his travel agency warned him not to risk it.
As a UK citizen, he doesn't need a visa to come to America for 90 days or less, but, if caught at customs with HIV-related medication, he could be forced to turn around and head home. "It's ridiculous," Biagio says.
He hasn't encountered this restriction anywhere on his travels throughout Europe so far. And it feeds into a broader view he has of the U.S. as a homophobic state that bans gay unions and ostracizes gays and lesbians in many parts of the country. "It's 18th century" behavior, he tells me. The law was implemented when greater stigma was attached to the disease -- especially regarding gay men -- and he interprets this current law as a perpetuation of that by some.
Biagio has been bartending for fourteen years. He began in Naples, Italy when he was fifteen before coming to London to learn English. Five years ago he was diagnosed, and his life changed, oddly, "very much for the better; I started taking care of myself, stopped taking drugs...Of course it'd be better if this had not happened, but..." he's still living his life to the fullest.
Over the past few months there's been serious reconsideration of America's HIV visitor policy. In December Bush talked about re-working it, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies put out a report in March calling for substantial changes to the law. Biagio isn't holding his breath. There are other places and things to see, and he loves it just where he is in Soho "serving drinks with passion" and "putting a smile on people's faces."
from The Washington Post

Knowing HIV Status For Prevention Seen On Rise

SAN FRANCISCO - Knowing a partner's HIV status before sex is a growing prevention method among young gay men, although risky behavior likely to transmit the virus is on the rise, according to two new U.S. studies.
The studies, which used virtually the same method to look at the prevalence and risk of HIV infection among gay men in San Francisco, also found that more effective therapies to fight the virus may be prompting uninfected men to use fewer protections when engaging in sex.
Sandra Schwarcz, an epidemiologist at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said the studies point to a need to better understand the growing practice of choosing a sexual partner based on their HIV status -- something researchers termed serosorting.
"The behaviors of gay men with committed partners were less risky than (those with) partners they were not committed to," she said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "This has been a change."
In Schwarcz's study, researchers questioned a group of men who knew they were infected with HIV and another group who were either HIV negative or did not know their status to see what activities might be spurring risky behavior.
Use of drugs such as methamphetamines and the fact that many men not infected with HIV were now less careful because of more effective HIV treatments were some of the reasons researchers cited for the increase in unprotected sex.
More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since the incurable disease was first recognized in 1981 and about 40 million now live with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
While the studies looked at gay men only in San Francisco, researchers said the results were a likely indicator of what is happening in other cities across the United States.
Dennis Osmond, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, said his study found that the number of gay men engaging in unprotected anal sex with a partner of a different HIV or unknown status rose from about 9 percent in 1997 to nearly 15 percent in 2002.
At the same time, however, there was an increasing trend among gay men to choose sexual partners with the same HIV status.
"When you are practicing it, it is a way of reducing risk," he said in an interview. "It appears it is a trend that has been growing in the last decade, especially among young men."
Both studies found that about a quarter of the gay men in San Francisco were HIV positive.
from Reuters

One-Third Of Sexually Active Older Adults With HIV/AIDs Has Unprotected Sex

One out of three sexually active older adults infected with HIV has unprotected sex, according to a study by Ohio University researchers . A survey of 260 HIV-positive older adults found that of those having sex, most were male, took Viagra and were in a relationship.
AIDs cases among the over-50 crowd reached 90,000 in 2003. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they will account for half of all HIV/AIDS cases in the United States by 2015 because medical intervention has extended the lifespan of those infected with HIV. Additionally, drugs such as Viagra have made it possible for older adults to remain sexually active longer.
Past studies have shown that up to 65 percent of older adults ages 60 to 71 have sexual intercourse. Among older adults who are HIV-positive, according to the Ohio University findings, 38 percent are sexually active.
“Those who are more likely to engage in riskier behavior – for example, those who are using drugs – are more likely to have unprotected sex,” said graduate student Travis Lovejoy, who led the study along with Ohio University health psychologist Timothy Heckman. “What we don’t know yet is whether these individuals are in a monogamous relationship with someone else who is HIV positive and believe there is no risk of infection.”
The study also found that sexual activity was more prevalent among HIV-positive older adults who were not cognitively impaired, were younger and who considered their overall health to be good.
Because many older adults with HIV are not sexually active, those who do have unprotected sex account for just 13 percent of the overall number of infected people who are aged 50 or older. However, one-third of those who are sexually active have unprotected sex, which suggests that prevention efforts may need to be more highly targeted toward these individuals.
The behavioral information was pulled from a survey of 260 HIV-positive older adults who were participating in a study examining support groups. The study was funded by a three-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Nursing Research.
from Media India

'Top' Designer Tells Housemates He Has HIV

John Gray, whose temper-filled outbursts caused friction among the competing interior designers on Top Design's debut last week, reveals his anger was fueled by medication used in his treatment.
"I just want everyone to know I'm HIV-positive," Gray tells his fellow contestants. "I'm not making excuses or apologies."
The burly Gray's macho posturing and outbursts may have sparked tension last week on the show, which was Bravo's highest-rated series premiere ever at 1.8 million viewers. But his comments tonight barely cause a reality-show ripple among the group, who share a dorm-style hotel for 10 weeks.
"Everyone was shocked by John's behavior the first few days," says rival Carisa-Perez Fuentes, 26.
After his disclosure, "there was some heightened understanding of his behavior. Relationships changed for the better. And he mellowed out."
Gray, 40, is a homosexual who was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1993. (Those who are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, don't necessarily have the disease.)
The late Pedro Zamora, an AIDS educator, was the only other reality-show contestant to reveal he was HIV-positive. That was on MTV's The Real World: San Francisco in 1994, a time when misconceptions were pervasive. His status caused upheaval and angst among his housemates.
"Times have changed," says Top Design executive producer Clay Newbill, who coincidentally was a Real World producer during Zamora's season.
"Back then, society's understanding was different. We saw it as an opportunity to educate people."
Gray says he's not on a similar mission: "I don't want to be the new face for HIV or be on the cover of Out. I felt the cast was entitled to an explanation for my behavior."
Still, advocacy groups applaud his move. Damon Romine of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation says, "This visibility is important in raising awareness that HIV is a major health issue."
Gray told producers of his condition during casting; producers say there were no plans to disclose it.
"This isn't a relationship show, so it wasn't an issue," Newbill says.
Gray says his anger was fueled by testosterone taken to counteract lower levels induced by HIV. His dosage was boosted 400% just before the show started because he wasn't sure how long he'd be away from home. "After the first episode, I asked myself why I was so angry, and it was a light-bulb moment," says Gray, a self-taught designer who operates Chicago-based Gray Consulting.
from USA Today

Men's Testicles 'HIV Hiding Spot'

HIV can dodge destruction by powerful antiretroviral drugs by hiding out in the testicles, scientists say.
The French work in the American Journal of Pathology suggests the gonads provide an ideal environment for the Aids virus to replicate itself.
Evidence shows even the best antiretrovirals find it difficult to penetrate the testes.
This may explain why HIV can still be found in the semen of men on drugs that successfully clear their blood of it.
Infected semen
The team say their work could help with the development of new antiretrovirals that can target HIV in the gonads.
This is particularly important given that sexual transmission is one of the main ways HIV is spread from person to person.
According to the most recent World Health Organization data, 39.5 million people are infected with HIV.
Dr Nathalie Dejucq-Rainsford and colleagues from Rennes University examined testicular tissue.
They discovered certain immune cells had the necessary machinery to allow HIV safe passage.
These cells, called macrophages, had all of the required receptors - CD4, CXCR4, CCR5, and DC-SIGN - to bind HIV.
Closer inspection revealed HIV was making copies of itself within the testicular macrophages.
from The BBC

AIDS Rate in Long Beach Twice That Of LA County

LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA - The city's AIDS rate is almost twice as high as Los Angeles County's and more than double the state's, according to a report prepared by city health officials and community members.
The City Council on Tuesday will hear this and other information as part of an annual progress report on the state of HIV and AIDS in Long Beach. Representatives from the city's Health and Human Services Department and the Long Beach Comprehensive HIV Planning Group compiled the latest figures.
"The presentation will remind the community and all Long Beach residents that HIV and AIDS still remain critical health issues," said Cheryl Barrit, prevention services officer at the city's health department.
In 2006, Long Beach had a cumulative AIDS incidence rate of 1,124.54 cases per 100,000 people. Los Angeles County had 535.87, and California's rate was 471.78. The cumulative rate counts all cases from 1981 through June 30, 2006.
In the state, only San Francisco and West Hollywood have higher rates than Long Beach, according to Nettie DeAugustine, bureau manager for preventive health at the Long Beach health department.
"There's reason to be concerned," DeAugustine said. "We have to be diligent and make sure we are presenting the message to schools, churches, in meetings, and everyone. We have to get out the word. We need to test more."
For the past four years, the AIDS rate has leveled off despite spikes in cases among all women and black men, DeAugustine said. But the bulk of cases - 45 percent - still involve gay men, she said.
"The epidemic has changed. There are more people of color infected. The numbers have shifted somewhat in Long Beach," DeAugustine said.
Greg Strayer, a Long Beach-based doctor who specializes in AIDS care, said the city's high incident rate may reflect better AIDS care that allows patients to live longer, as well as the city's popularity with gay men.
"The numbers are not alarming. It's part of our culture in Long Beach. We've been like this for 26 years," Strayer said.
Instead, Strayer said it's more important to pay attention to new syphilis cases and methamphetamine users, both groups which are rapidly growing in the gay community.
With a $2 million annual AIDS/HIV budget from state and county funds, the city's health department struggles to fulfill the needs of the city's large infected population. It could use more money to hire additional outreach staff and to buy medication, and the department may ask the city for funding, DeAugustine said.
Health officials will recommend to the council more public education to encourage HIV/AIDS testing, help for community groups working on the issue and continuing discussions with the mayor and the council.
from The Press-Telegram

Four Seattle-Area Gay Men Found With Hard-To-Treat Strain Of HIV

A hard-to-treat strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been found in four gay men in King County, and authorities fear it could spread to more.
There is no evidence that the troublesome strain of HIV is spreading rapidly, but its appearance underscores the need for renewed emphasis on safe sex practices, officials in the Seattle-King County public health department said Thursday.
"There may be more cases we don't know about," said Dr. Bob Wood, the agency's HIV-AIDS program director.
"We are still working to learn more about these individuals and the virus they have contracted," said Dorothy F. Teeter, interim director of the department. "We are concerned for these individuals and their partners and are continuing our investigation."
The same genetic strain of HIV was found over a 15-month period in all four men, methamphetamine users who each had multiple partners, but none is known to have had sex with any of other three, officials said.
"That's highly unusual," said Dr. Peter Shalit, who treats HIV-AIDS patients and directs HIV-AIDS research at Swedish Medical Center.
One possibility is that there is a new strain of multi-drug-resistant HIV that is spread more easily than previous drug-resistant strains, "definitely a scary prospect," Shalit said.
While at least 100 county residents die of AIDS annually, there is evidence of declining condom use and other safe-sex practices among gay drug users especially, said Wood, who is gay and has medically managed his own HIV infection for more than 20 years.
"There's a lot of complacency," he said. "People need to know that some of these new infections may be impossible to treat."
Seattle was among the first metropolitan areas in the country to begin a surveillance program for multi-drug-resistant HIV in 2003. Since then, doctors and other health care providers have been asked to test routinely for drug resistance in anyone who is HIV-positive and to report any indication of multi-drug-resistant strains.
Before Thursday health officials had identified 12 cases of multi-drug-resistant HIV in the county, none as resistant to anti-viral drugs as the most recent four.
None of the four men has experienced any symptoms, Wood said, but experts fear that drug-resistant HIV could progress to AIDS much faster than typical HIV.
In addition, Dr. Robert D. Harrington, director of a Harborview Medical Center clinic for HIV patients, said treatment for those are resistant to several types of drugs could cost more than twice as much as the $15,000 a year that is needed for typical HIV.
from KGW / The Associated Press

Anti-HIV Gel Passes Brazil Trial

A gel which stops the HIV virus from reproducing itself and spreading within the body has passed its first clinical trial in Brazil.
Derived from the algae Dictyota pfaffii, which is found off the coast of Brazil, the gel was found to stop 95% of HIV replication in immune-system cells.
Microbicides like this gel can be used by women to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS without the knowledge of their partner. They will be of particular help in poorer countries where infection rates are rising, but where condom use is not widely accepted by men.
Researchers are planning a second round of tests in February, and hope the gel will become available in seven years.
An affordable version of the treatment would greatly reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS in hotspots like central and southern Africa, they say.
The gel contains dolabelane diterpene, which inhibits two enzymes which are involved in virus replication and the spread of viruses to other cells.
Other microbicides are also in the pipeline in Europe and North America, and may come to market within five years.
from Healthcare Today

HIV/AIDS Campain

A provocative public service campaign intended to help halt the spread of HIV is drawing attention because of who is delivering the message as well as for the frank nature of what they have to say.
The video, radio and online campaign enlists four celebrities to deliver candid, no-nonsense remarks that link unsafe sex and drug use to the rising rate of infection for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, among gay men. The stars – Whoopi Goldberg, Amanda Peet, Rosie Perez and Susan Sarandon – urge the audience to change their behavior for the better by loving and respecting themselves and each other.
In fact, “Look, listen, love, respect” is the theme of the campaign, which is appearing on two national cable television networks, Here and Logo, and on local cable TV systems owned by companies like Cablevision, Cox Communications and Time Warner.
There are plans to run the commercials on video screens in clubs and bars in cities around the country as well as to produce audio versions of the spots for the national Out Q channel of Sirius Satellite Radio.
The Internet is also a central focus of the campaign, which includes a dedicated Web site, and video clips of the commercials, which can be watched on youtube.com and MySpace.
Although the campaign has a national distribution, it began as a collaboration between two organizations in New York, HIV Forum NYC and the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. Financial support for the ads is coming from two other organizations, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, representing the theater community, and Cable Positive, for the cable TV industry.
The campaign offers a twist on the time-honored tactic of celebrity endorsements for causes as well as for commercial purposes, both intended to sprinkle a bit of stardust on the brands or organizations being promoted.
Almost from the days that stars first began to be paid to peddle products, they also lent a hand – free of charge -- to raise money for charitable organizations. The list of beneficiaries includes the March of Dimes, the Will Rogers Institute, the Muscular Dystrophy Association and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
More recently, celebrities have started to promote causes that are less mainstream and sometimes touch on hot-button issues. Among them are abortion rights, fighting global warming, ending poverty and preventing AIDS.
The four stars in the new campaign join other celebrities who have appeared in pro bono campaigns about AIDS and HIV including Bono, Richard Gere, Heidi Klum, Sharon Stone and Elizabeth Taylor.
“Our primary objective is to stimulate dialogue around HIV and gay men’s health,” says Dan Carlson, co-founder of HIV Forum NYC, who developed the campaign with Jay Laudato, executive director of Callen-Lorde, and Colin A. Weil, a writer, director and producer.
“HIV prevention these days is more nuanced from back in the day when it was, ‘Wear a condom, wear a condom, wear a condom,’” Mr. Carlson says.
“Everyone knows condoms prevent HIV, but infection rates have increased since 1999,” he says, adding: “It’s not an issue of education. It’s behavior, more of a commitment to personal health and to each other.”
The idea was that women could best “change the conversation about condom use,” Mr. Carlson says, “that it’s not a barrier or an inhibition or about feeling less, it’s an act of self-love, everyone’s responsibility, an act of respect for each other.”
Why women? “For gay men, we love our female icons,” Mr. Carlson says. “We felt these honest, direct, loving messages would be heard best if told by women we can see as our mothers, best friends, sisters.”
“They can tell us things we may not be ready to hear from each other,” he adds.
Another reason for women to appear in the campaign, Mr. Laudato says, is that “the message would be clouded if there were men” because the target audience may have wondered “Is he straight? Is he gay? Is he hot? Is he not?”
“We wanted people of stature,” Mr. Laudato says, “and frankly, I don’t think we would have gotten men of similar stature” because well-known actors may have been more reluctant “to talk about controversial things” than the actresses are.
To say the four actresses touch on controversial topics in their eight commercials is an understatement.
For instance, in one of the two commercials featuring Ms. Perez, she declares: “Safe sex can be hot sex. I mean, trust me. It just takes a little imagination.”
One of the two spots with Ms. Sarandon begins with her saying: “You’re at a club. You just met. He’s really hot, and you go home together. Now, the moment of truth. Do you talk about HIV?”
In the other commercial, Ms. Sarandon discusses what research shows is a correlation between the growing use of the drug crystal meth (methamphetamine) and the increase in HIV infection rates.
That subject is brought up in other spots, too. Ms. Peet says, “Be a friend, say something” if someone you know is using the drug. Ms. Perez asserts, “You can join the party without losing your head.”
Ms. Goldberg may be the frankest of all. “Come over here, we need to talk,” she says at the start of both her spots. One focuses on drug use: “Do you really think doing crystal meth makes you cool? Meth makes you do dumb stuff like barebacking” – that is, have sex without a condom.
In her other commercial, Ms. Goldberg mocks the idea that barebacking is cool by countering that “fighting back” and “love and respect” are actually cool.
Mr. Weil praises the actresses for agreeing to deliver what he calls “compassionate and caring messages” that, by using women rather than men, are “not clouded by sex per se.”
Gay men are vexed by “self-image uses, self-esteem issues, isolation issues,” Mr. Weil says. “At the end of the day, they’re not taking care of themselves because they feel they’re not worth it.”
So the campaign, along with others from organizations like GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis), which carry themes like “HIV stops with me,” is intended to say, “We’re all part of the problem and we’re all part of the solution,” Mr. Weil says.
That approach has generated considerable debate within the gay community, centered on the concept that ads deemed judgmental of behavior can be counterproductive because the target audience tunes out the criticism as nagging, scolding or simplistic.
Some computer users who posted comments about the campaign on a popular blog, Towleroad (towleroad.com), were quite critical.
“Everyone needs to show responsibility in their sexual behavior, not just gay men,” one poster wrote. Another poster made a snide remark about Ms. Peet’s acting abilities.
A third poster wrote: “Selecting four random women to deliver the message feels a lot like Nancy Reagan’s ‘Just say no’ campaign. Frankly, when an old woman tells me not to do something, it just makes me want to do it more.”
Mr. Laudato says he was “horrified” by some of the posts. Mr. Carlson says he was surprised by the tone the complainers took because “from my perspective, they were missing the message.”
“For many years, we’ve been told we’re not valued and our relationships were not valued,” he adds. “A more positive message might be a little difficult to hear, even from people like Susan and Whoopi, who’ve been with us for many years and come to this with a tremendous amount of credibility.”
A second round of commercials is being considered, the three creators of the campaign say, which they hope would be out for the annual series of gay pride events in June.
Mr. Weil says they are “open to a different type of cast” next time, “maybe out gay actors.”
No fair asking a catty question like, “Will they hold the casting call inside a phone kiosk?”
from The New York Times

Inmate With AIDS Charged With Sexual Battery

OHIO - A Cleveland man who has AIDS is facing charges after his cellmate at Lorain Correctional Institution told officials he awoke to find the man performing a sexual act on him.
Michael Gross, 32, was indicted on sexual battery and felonious assault charges. If convicted, the charges could keep him in prison beyond the one-year sentence he is serving for drug and weapons charges out of Cuyahoga County.
Gross’ conviction stemmed from a March 2006 traffic stop in Valley View during which police found a loaded handgun, crack and marijuana in the car, authorities said.
County Prosecutor Dennis Will said Gross’ cellmate at LCI was a 25-year old man serving a 1½-year sentence from Summit County on drug and weapons charges.
The charges stem from a Sept. 29 incident, he said.
“One guy woke up and found (Gross) performing oral sex on him,” Will said.
The victim and Gross then got into a fistfight that brought guards down on the cell and led to both men being treated at the infirmary.
“It was quite a donnybrook,” Will said.
Will said the felonious assault charge stems from the fact that Gross has AIDS, not from the fight.
Sexual assaults aren’t uncommon between prisoners, Will said.
“Any place there’s a prison or a correctional facility, you’re going to have incidents like this,” Will said.
Gross, who has prior criminal convictions for felonious assault, theft and forgery, is now incarcerated at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The victim is at another institution, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
from The Chronicle Telegram