If Any Other Group Had This Disproportion, It Would Be A Sign

If Any Other Group Had This Disproportion, It Would Be A Sign

From the August 28, 2009 Washington Blade (one of the gay newspapers);

ATLANTA — Gay and bisexual men account for half of new HIV infections in the U.S. and have AIDS at a rate more than 50 times greater than other groups, according to Centers for Disease Control & Prevention data presented at the National HIV Prevention Conference this week in Atlanta.

Dr. Amy Lansky of the CDC presented research at the Aug. 24 plenary in which the CDC estimated in the U.S. there were 692.2 new HIV cases in 2007 per 100,000 men who have sex with men.

While the CDC data has continually reported gay and bisexual men and other MSM of all races as the groups with the highest numbers of new HIV cases each year, AIDS activists said this was the first time the CDC clearly stated with a concrete rate how the disease is impacting gay and bisexual men. Gay and bisexual men are also the only risk group in which new infections are increasing.

“They have never converted the numbers into a rate,” said Walt Senterfitt of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project. Senterfitt is an epidemiologist.

Gee, I wonder why?

Of course I don't wonder why. No one has had the courage to face this before. Gay and bisexual men are about 4-4.5% of males in the U.S.--so they are less than 2-2.25% of the total population (because prepubescent males usually haven't identified themselves as gay). And yet more than 50% of the new AIDS cases in this country are in about 2% of the population.

It's a sign alright--that gay and bisexual men are doing something that they shouldn't be doing: changing sexual partners somewhat less often than they change socks. Yes, there's no question that some of the problem is that anal sex is especially well suited to the passing of AIDS from man to the next, who can then pass it on in the same way. (Heterosexual anal sex, while it also has a serious risk of spreading AIDS, tends to stop at the woman, because she is not going to be putting the AIDS virus into another man in the same way.) But if gay men were monogamous at even the level of say, Hugh Hefner in his prime, this would not be such a problem.

How can we solve our health care crisis, when some people just can't seem to control themselves?