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Category Archives: Gay/MSM
Guilty until proven innocent of an impossible crime
The Guardian has an interesting recent article which, as ever, can be viewed from the lens of Rethinking. Here’s some quotes to consider:
…While a Missouri judge found Johnson guilty, the court actually never produced any evidence that he had any intent on exposing the his partner(s) to HIV, nor could they prove that the partners who testified against Johnson became positive due to sex with him.
…At his sentencing hearing in May, 30 videos of him engaging in sex were shown to the jury – many of which showed him engaging in behaviors where HIV transmission risk is low. The prosecution used these to get a harsh sentencing of Johnson. But while the videos do show him having sex, they do not necessarily prove that he didn’t disclose his status – Johnson testified he did with some partners.
Johnson is a gay black man, so the inference is that he’s likely to be doubly negligible.
…Ninety-two percent of new HIV infections occur from people who do not know their status or are not on treatment, according to a February 2015 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If you get infections from alleged sources that turn out to be negative, then what?
…That is some messed up logic, especially when the judge literally threw Johnson’s life away on speculation: both about what he knew and when, and about how the disease will affect the lives of his former partners. Missouri HIV criminalization laws can be applied to cases involving sex, and to cases of spitting while positive – which is a virtually impossible way to acquire HIV. But who needs science?
Yes, who needs science?
…The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it hasn’t bent nearly far enough for bodies that are black and queer.
If you’re a homosexual black man you’re not dissimilar to a woman who has to be thrown into the water to prove she is not a witch.
Virus or environment causes HIV-positivity?
Reuters reports on a new study which connects HIV-positivity with societal issues. Unfortunately, the virus hypothesis is not divorced.
In unrelated news, a video has recently appeared online in which Dr Peter Gotzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre (Cochrane produces detailed reports on all the literature available on a subject) condemns mammography as being a risky procedure which provides little benefit. Gotzche shares an experience with Peter Duesberg in regards to censorship of an article:
In 2006 a paper by Gøtzsche on mammography screening was electronically published in the European Journal of Cancer ahead of print. The journal later removed the paper completely from the journal website without any formal retraction. The paper was later published in Danish Medical Bulletin with a short note from the editor, and Gøtzsche and his co-authors commented on the unilateral retraction that the authors were not involved in.
Additionally, Rethinking AIDS President, David Crowe, has interviewed Gotzsche previously. Listen here.
BBC Newsnight host believes drugs are a greater problem among gay men
[BBC Newsnight host Evan Davis] who has always been candid about his own sexuality, said homosexuals were more prone to destructive behaviour
… He was said to have described drug taking as ‘socially infectious’ among the gay community and said it was not helped by their slightly greater disposable income.
… ‘Once gay people start taking drugs, they’ll take more drugs because it’s socially infectious and one person will take them, then another. I just think it’s something gay people have to watch out for.’
… Davis[‘s] comments come after the British Crime Survey found drug use among gay and bisexual men was three times higher than for straight men and was higher in the majority of individual drugs consumed including cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamines and cannabis
[Source: Daily Mail]
Gay lobby HRC prostitutes itself to Gilead/Truvada/PrEP
In one of the most brazen developments in the greed driven HIV-AIDS Industry, America’s number one gay rights lobby, the Human Rights Campaign, (HRC) has “endorsed” Gilead’s Truvada for PrEP–toxic chemotherapy for “HIV negatives.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/gay-rights-group-backs-use-of-hiv-prevention-pill/2014/10/18/2c2dd788-56e6-11e4-b86d-184ac281388d_story.html
To coincide with its annual self-congratulatory black tie dinner last night in Washington, HRC announced it had received a $300,000 grant from the Elton John AIDS Foundation–a major beneficiary of the largesse of Gilead Sciences. The featured speaker at the dinner was William Jefferson Clinton, whose foundation has received god know’s how much money from Gilead. And HRC’s $400,000+/year executive director and former Clinton White House press aide and native of Hope, Arkansas Chad Griffin warmly embraced his former employer at HRC’s dinner.
I don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle put together yet, but the stench of Big Pharma, crony capitalist money laundering hangs in the otherwise crisp October air of these corrupt 68.3 square miles surrounded by reality in which I live, aka Washington, DC.
–Terry Michael
New dedicated HIV journal by The Lancet starts with superfluous headline
“The Lancet HIV: High rates of recreational drug use among HIV-positive gay and bisexual men in the UK strongly linked with condomless sex” …How about removing the last 5 words of the headline to hit the nail on the head?
“The Lancet HIV is a new journal launched in September 2014 and will build on The Lancet journals’ rich history of publishing HIV/AIDS research to provide a reliable foundation for advocacy and for programmatic and political change. The journal publishes research articles, linked commentary, and correspondence related to previous content. The journal accepts clinical, epidemiological, operational, and implementation research submissions, unifying these disciplines across a single vision for the health of those living with HIV. See http://www.thelancet.com/hiv for more details.”
If you’re healthy and you know it, take your ARVs…
In an article almost suitable for a parody news site, the WHO is “urging all sexually active gay men to take antiretroviral drugs to reduce the spread of HIV.”
Clearly, condoms aren’t working (or perhaps there’s an insinuation that gay men of all colours are just as bad as Africans in safe sex?) for this to be suggested. And this suggestion is pretty much akin to asking people to take cancer chemotherapy just because they have a family history.
The admission that “men who have sex with men are 19 times more likely to have HIV than the general population. [according to WHO]” is glaringly at odds with people who emphasise a growing heterosexual epidemic.
There is not even particularly a gay plague, it has always been limited to a minority of a minority who indulge in highly-specific high-risk practices, or are brushed into the category for other health reasons.
Severe leaky gut = gay-related immunodeficiency? Orthodoxy seeming to agree…
Henry Bauer comments on indirect mainstream support for the intestinal dysbiosis theory of Aids (likely primarily in homosexual men) here.
Note that orthodoxy defender Seth Kalichman ridiculed supporters of dysbiosis theory, so what will he do now, now that – albeit indirectly – the mainstream are investigating this?
“All that remains is for the mainstream to realize that it is not “HIV” that causes the leaky gut, “HIV” is simply a biomarker for leaky gut.”
Crystal meth usage high amongst gay men – linked to ‘HIV infection’
[T]here is one small sub-group [where crystal meth] is having a disproportionate effect…: gay men on the extreme end of the party scene in London, where it’s being linked to a worrying rise in HIV.
…The drug can be smoked, snorted and swallowed, but increasing numbers of gay men in the capital are injecting it, sharing needles and combing it with other drugs and high-risk sexual activity. It’s often taken at “chill-outs” and sex parties, organised on social networking sites, where men engage in sex with a number of different people.
…A new report compiled by the London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine recently revealed three times as many gay and bisexual men in London inject drugs than in England as a whole. The analysis also found that four times as many use crystal meth in the capital than across the rest of the country.
…At the heart of the problem, he says, are issues around self-esteem, intimacy, sexual identity and internalised homophobia.
A sensitive community takes drugs and gets ill… Why blame HIV?
[Source: Channel 4 News]
Anal sex and ‘HIV’
“The rate of new HIV infections is especially high among gay men recently diagnosed with a rectal sexually transmitted infection (STI), according to research conducted in New York City and published in the online edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases.
…“Our results demonstrate that rectal CT/GC infections are objective markers for identifying persons at an exceptionally high risk for HIV,” comment the authors.
…STIs can cause biological changes that increase susceptibility to infection with HIV.”
Put another way, maybe STIs combined with the need for treatments that can be harsh on the gut increase the likelihood of becoming HIV+ in accordance with Tony Lance’s theory.
[Source: Aidsmap]
AIDS Dissident 