hiv/aids strains suck
Risky Sex is Back
NY Times, Feb. 18
Gay Americans who watched their friends and neighbors die in large numbers in the AIDS epidemic of the 1980's learned a tragic lesson about disease transmission and the dangers of unprotected sex. But the lesson seems not to have endured: young people are returning to dangerous sexual behavior.
Public health officials in New York recently encountered a gay man infected with a strain of H.I.V. that is resistant to virtually all of the standard drugs and that appears to lead to a rapid onset of full-blown AIDS. No one yet knows whether the case represents a new phase in the epidemic or a problem confined to a single individual in New York and possibly another in San Diego. But public health workers are justifiably alarmed by the apparently widespread risky behavior this case has brought to light.
The patient is believed to have had unprotected sex with hundreds of people in recent months, sometimes at parties stoked by methamphetamine, a drug that lowers sexual inhibitions. Open sex parties were common 30 years ago, but were all but stamped out in the 90's thanks to gay anti-AIDS campaigners and public health officials.
Health workers and community volunteers have a lot of work to do to turn this trend around. The medical community should make the new rapid AIDS tests more widely available so people can learn right away whether they are infected. It should also be routine to test newly identified AIDS patients for drug resistance, as is now common for tuberculosis. Such data could serve as an early warning system for changes in the AIDS virus. The first step, however, should be to teach another generation to avoid risky behavior - like the plague.
NY Times, Feb. 18
Gay Americans who watched their friends and neighbors die in large numbers in the AIDS epidemic of the 1980's learned a tragic lesson about disease transmission and the dangers of unprotected sex. But the lesson seems not to have endured: young people are returning to dangerous sexual behavior.
Public health officials in New York recently encountered a gay man infected with a strain of H.I.V. that is resistant to virtually all of the standard drugs and that appears to lead to a rapid onset of full-blown AIDS. No one yet knows whether the case represents a new phase in the epidemic or a problem confined to a single individual in New York and possibly another in San Diego. But public health workers are justifiably alarmed by the apparently widespread risky behavior this case has brought to light.
The patient is believed to have had unprotected sex with hundreds of people in recent months, sometimes at parties stoked by methamphetamine, a drug that lowers sexual inhibitions. Open sex parties were common 30 years ago, but were all but stamped out in the 90's thanks to gay anti-AIDS campaigners and public health officials.
Health workers and community volunteers have a lot of work to do to turn this trend around. The medical community should make the new rapid AIDS tests more widely available so people can learn right away whether they are infected. It should also be routine to test newly identified AIDS patients for drug resistance, as is now common for tuberculosis. Such data could serve as an early warning system for changes in the AIDS virus. The first step, however, should be to teach another generation to avoid risky behavior - like the plague.