WHO: HIV is a gay disease.

HIV is largely a gay disease (outside of Africa.) While that’s not a shocking statement to anyone who’s been awake and not bound to a politically correct speech code, I’m amazed that WHO admitted it.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO’s department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

Dr De Cock said: “It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia – China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn’t look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas.”

Hat tip to Ace for the WHO article. I’m reposting, because it’s got nifty charts and statistics and is only three months old, Stopping STDs: “HIV is a gay disease.” It’s high time we finally break out of the politically correct straightjacket and deal with the reality of this disease and who is likely to be a victim of it. This will save lives - which should have been the point all along.

And in related news - way too many New Yorkers are having unprotected sex.
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An ad campaign instructs - “HIV is a Gay Disease. Own it. End it.”

The campaign drew cat-calls with many critics saying such frank talk would ratchet up anti-gay bigotry. Others were more measured, such as one columnist who wrote, “Time will tell whether the in-your-face approach to shaking everyone out of complacency translates to a resurgence of bigotry and stigmatism - and whether the number of lives of young L.A. men saved outweighs that.”

My family and the acquaintances I’ve known with HIV/AIDS run the gamut of infection methods - promiscuously gay, heterosexual IV drug user, former gutter punk prostitute, hemophiliac who got it from a transfusion, and a baby infected from birth. So of the five, two have it through absolutely no fault of their own - the hemophiliac was infected by transfusion in the 80s with a mild strain. (It still kills you, but much more slowly than the new versions like E strain. He’s not expected to live much longer, but doctors have been saying that for literally years, so who knows?) The rest got it due to poor judgment, long after people knew they should be practicing abstinence or at least having safe sex and about the danger of sharing needles. That sentence is not a judgment and I don’t feel smug about it. It’s simply a statement of fact, the same way I have a higher risk of cancer due to the fact that I smoked for 17 years and don’t live a healthy lifestyle even now. Actions have consequences. Overeating leads to obesity. Smoking leads to cancer, emphysema, and other ailments. AIDS infection - and STD infection generally - is nearly always a consequence of certain types of behavior. It’s past time to acknowledge that openly, to state the uncomfortable truths that can save lives. To call that bigotry is completely ridiculous. It’s basic common sense that will save lives.

Uganda acknowledged and actively promoted the idea that certain behaviors were associated with AIDS infection. It implemented an aggressive ABC program that has shown real results:

Abstinence until marriage; advising those who are sexually active to Be faithful to a single partner or to reduce their number of partners; and finally, especially if you have more than one sexual partner, always use a Condom. A number of factors helped to encourage people to take up these strategies.

… The [Ugandan] government worked alongside many independent organisations, using different messages to address different groups of people according to their needs as well as their ability to respond. Young people were encouraged to wait before first having sex, or to return to abstinence if they were not virgins. All sexually active people were given the message of “zero grazing”, which meant staying with regular partners and not having casual sex. Those who did not abstain were encouraged to use condoms, which were promoted to the population as a whole.

The United States has not made a serious effort to promote changes in people’s sexual behavior. We’re surrounded by sex. Even the broadcast TV stations show nudity that ten years ago you wouldn’t have seen on cable during daylight hours. As Planned Parenthood says on its website for teenagers, There’s no such thing as a “normal” age for becoming sexually active. The implicit follow up to that thought is “so if it feels good, do it!” According to the CDC, at least one in four teenage girls have an STD. With statistics like this, it seems clear that the sexual revolution is over and we lost.

There have been several campaigns to the effect of “AIDS affects everyone.” Well, it’s true that it’s possible for all sorts of people to get infected with HIV, but the fact is that the group most at risk is homosexual men. Men can get breast cancer yet we don’t have massive ad campaigns telling them to examine themselves. We put the focus on women’s breast cancer because that’s the group most in danger.

Gay activists fall back on worldwide statistics to claim that HIV is not, in fact, a “gay disease.” Worldwide, the stereotypical HIV sufferer is a woman in Africa. But here in the U.S. it’s a gay man. The 2005 infection rates (the latest available at the CDC website) are actually up 2% from 2004. To say that HIV is a “gay disease” should not be a controversial topic at all. Three times as many men get it as women, and two thirds of those men got it from male to male sexual contact. Gay men are more likely than anyone else to get HIV; it’s that simple. The politically correct ban on pointing that out and encouraging people to stop the behavior that puts them at risk has cost many lives.

The recent increase in syphilis cases is less well known but certainly serious.

The rate of [Primary and Secondary] syphilis among men has risen 54 percent over the past five years (from 3.7 per 100,000 in 2002 to 5.7 per 100,000 in 2006), driving overall increases in syphilis rates for the nation. Several sources of data suggest that increased transmission of P&S syphilis among [Men who have Sex with Men] may be largely responsible for these increases.

While syphilis is easily curable, according to the CDC it “facilitates the spread of HIV by increasing the likelihood of transmission of the virus.” The CDC notes in Trends in Reportable Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the United States, 2006,

While substantial progress has been made in preventing, diagnosing, and treating certain STDs in recent years, CDC estimates that approximately 19 million new infections occur each year, almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24. In addition to the physical and psychological consequences of STDs, these diseases also exact a tremendous economic toll. Direct medical costs associated with STDs in the United States are estimated at up to $14.7 billion annually in 2006 dollars.

We’ve seen the results in Uganda of encouraging people to change their sexual behavior. It’s time for a national campaign here along those lines to help prevent STD infection - and part of that ad campaign should focus specifically on gay men’s risk of HIV. That’s not bigotry. It’s not moralism. It’s just common sense.