HIV - The disease with its own human rights status.

This is the kind of insanity that only SJWs would come up with:

//In a test of shifting attitudes about HIV, a group of state lawmakers has proposed that it no longer be a felony for someone to knowingly expose others to the disease by engaging in unprotected sex and not telling the partner about the infection.

The measure by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and others would make such acts a misdemeanor, a proposal that has sparked opposition from Republican lawmakers.

The same downgrade in crime level would apply to people who donate blood or semen without telling the blood or semen bank that they have acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, or have tested positive for human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, the precursor to AIDS.

“HIV-related stigma is one of our main obstacles to reducing and ultimately eliminating infections,” Wiener said. “When you criminalize HIV or stigmatize people who have HIV it encourages people not to get tested, to stay in the shadows, not to be open about their status, not to seek treatment.”//

Of course, no one criminalized HIV or stigmatized people with HIV; rather, what was criminalized was the KNOWING transmission of HIV, which is effectively an assault.//

If only American gays were permitted by the Pope to use condoms.

HIV Continues to Spread Among Gay Men, Studies Show:

As the world’s leading AIDS researchers gather for the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., scientists report that despite gains in controlling the spread of HIV, the disease has continued to spread at an alarming rate in the very population in which it first appeared — gay men.

In a series of papers in the Lancet dedicated to the dynamics of HIV among gay men — a group epidemiologists define as men who have sex with men (MSM) — scientists say that the continued burden of AIDS in this group is due to a combination of lifestyle and biological factors that put these men at higher risk. Rates are rising in all countries around the world.

In one study, led by Chris Beyrer, of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, researchers analyzed surveillance reports and studies of HIV among MSM, including data that were part of routine United Nations reporting from member nations. Rates of HIV among gay men ranged from 3% in the Middle East to 25% in the Caribbean. In all reporting nations, rates were on the rise, even in developed nations like the U.S., Australia and the U.K. where HIV is declining overall.

In fact, says Beyrer, income does not seem to matter when it comes to HIV trends among MSM. In the U.S., for example, infection rates among gay men have been increasing by 8% each year since 2001, contributing to a 15% prevalence rate and putting the U.S. on par with countries like Thailand, Malaysia and some African and Caribbean nations where neither awareness of HIV/AIDS nor drug treatments are as widespread. HIV prevalence rates among MSM in Brazil, Canada, Italy and India range between 11% and 15%, while many western European countries have lower rates of around 6%.

Public health experts have been concerned about the rising rates among MSM for years now, viewing the current epidemic as the second wave — the first having occurred in the 1980s. Today’s infections, they say, are affecting a new generation of men who didn’t live through the initial devastation of AIDS’s early days, when there were no drug treatments and a diagnosis was a death sentence. Public health messages about safe sex practices and testing targeted to gay men have waned in the intervening years, and now, some experts say, a new generation of at-risk men have to be educated about the disease.

HIV has always been more common among gay men, but Beyrer and his colleagues say the traditional risk factors may not entirely explain the surge in many cases. Traditionally, HIV experts have pointed to high-risk behaviors such as unprotected sex, having multiple partners, injection drug use and drug use in general for making gay men more vulnerable to infection. But there may be biological reasons for the enhanced risk as well. For example, there is an 18 times greater risk of HIV transmission through anal sex than through vaginal sex, which may explain why the virus continues to thrive in gay men, despite the fact that they still receive the bulk of HIV awareness and treatment public-health messages. “If HIV infection in MSM is heavily biologically determined, do present approaches to HIV programming for MSM, which rely heavily on information, education and behavior change strategies, make sense?” the authors write. “The epidemiology suggests that urgent reform is needed.”

That’s why the latest data on using HIV treatments to protect healthy people from infection, a strategy known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), are of particular interest to public health experts. In another paper in the Lancet series, researchers estimate that about 25% of new infections among MSM might be avoided if prevention practices such as PrEP could be combined with existing strategies, such as safe sex counseling and condom use.

A candidate for the Paul Erhlich Award: Another disaster that didn't happen.

Back in the '80s the scare factor was that AIDS would explode through the heterosexual population. At the time there were those who argued against this scenario, but they were regularly denounced as anti-scientific or anti-gay or some-such.

It turns out that nearly 30 years later, the skeptics were right after all. According to the Center for Disease Control:

Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM)1of all races and ethnicities remain the population most severely affected by HIV.

CDC estimates that MSM account for just 2% of the US population, but accounted for 61% of all new HIV infections in 2009. MSM accounted for 49% of people living with HIV infection in 2008 (the most recent year prevalence data are available).

In 2009, white MSM accounted for the largest number of new HIV infections of any group in the US, followed closely by black MSM.

Young, black MSM were the only risk group in the US to experience statistically significant increases in new HIV infections from 2006–2009.

Another myth casually debunked by the CDC cite is the "10%" myth that was bruited about throughout the '70s and '80s, namely that one in ten Americans is homosexual. Apparently, the true figue is close to 2%.

Presumably, the interesting questions are: Why was the prediction of disaster so wrong? Who was responsible for making the wrong predictions? And, can we stop listening to these clowns in the future?

Here's a graph:

Another question - why are the infection rates so different between the white and black populations?

Strange.

Remember, though, that the Catholic Church is responsible for the spread of AIDS in Africa.

Irony alert -

Contraceptive Used in Africa May Double Risk of H.I.V.

The most popular contraceptive for women in eastern and southern Africa, a hormone shot given every three months, appears to double the risk the women will become infected with H.I.V., according to a large study published Monday. And when it is used by H.I.V.-positive women, their male partners are twice as likely to become infected than if the women had used no contraception.


The findings potentially present an alarming quandary for women in Africa. Hundreds of thousands of them suffer injuries, bleeding, infections and even death in childbirth from unintended pregnancies. Finding affordable and convenient contraceptives is a pressing goal for international health authorities.

So, if a person followed Catholic doctrine and only had sex within marriage to someone who also followed Catholic doctrine, then the chance of catching AIDS would be, well, zero.
 
On the other hand, following the advice of modernist secularists seems to be a good recipe for spreading HIV in Africa.
 
Ironic, what?
 
Via Mark Shea at his new Patheos digs.

From the "They Haven't Got a Clue " file.

Dr. Michael Sidibe praised Pope Benedict for giving new room for dialogue, apparently by saying something new.

The head of the U.N. AIDS agency told a Vatican conference Saturday that the pope had opened the door to greater dialogue with his groundbreaking comments on condoms and HIV prevention – even as Vatican officials stressed abstinence and marital fidelity as the best prevention.


Dr. Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, was invited to speak to the conference on preventing HIV and caring for HIV-positive people, a significant event in and of itself, given that the Vatican usually only invites like-minded outsiders to its conferences and UNAIDS has not been like-minded on this issue at all.

UNAIDS holds that condoms are an "integral and essential" part of HIV prevention programs, which it says should also include education about delaying the start of sexual activity, limiting sexual partners and marital fidelity. The Catholic Church opposes condom use as part of its overall opposition to artificial contraception.

The Church does, however, play a crucial role in caring for HIV-positive people, particularly in Africa where some two-thirds of the world's 22 million infected people live. It runs hospitals and hospices, orphanages and clinics and has played a critical role in helping to de-stigmatize those with the virus and stress the need for changes in sexual behavior to stop its spread.

But the Church has long been accused of contributing to the AIDS crisis because of its opposition to condoms.

That was why Pope Benedict XVI made headlines last year when he said in the book "Light of the World" that a male prostitute who intends to use a condom might be taking a first step toward greater responsibility because he is looking out for the welfare of his partner.

"This is very important," Sidibe told the conference. "This has helped me to understand his position better and has opened up a new space for dialogue."

At the same time, however, the Vatican officials speaking at the conference either glossed over or made no reference whatsoever to Benedict's condom remarks – evidence of a certain "one step forward, two steps back" mentality that often characterizes developments in the Catholic Church.

Dr. Sidibe and the author of this column demonstrate that they have spent so much time listening to their "amen corner" that their ability to hear and understand something other than what they want to hear has atrophied.

Benedict did not endorse condom usage.  What he did was say that when a person choose to commit a moral wrong in a way that limits worse evils to other people rather than lesser evils, that person may be making the first steps toward a conversion. 

That's all.

It's nothing new really, and hardly surprising, except to people who can't handle shades of gray in their moral outlook.