"Remembering My Friends"

via Edge, by Michael Petrelis

December 1, World AIDS Day, is just around the corner and as the day approaches I’ve been thinking of marking the occasion by remembering and honoring absent friends who’ve died from HIV-related illnesses and complications.

For World AIDS Day last year, on my personal blog, I wrote about a true unsung hero of the epidemic, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, who was my first AIDS doctor and whom I cannot credit enough for helping keep me, and so many others, alive and relatively well.

Before the term AIDS was created, and even prior to GRID, gay-related immune deficiency, Sonnabend was on the frontlines of gay male health in New York City.

Among his accomplishments was developing effective prophylaxis regimes to avert opportunistic illnesses, creating safe sex guidelines and assisting people with AIDS to empower themselves.

Retired from seeing patients, he lives in London now.

This year it’s time for me to recall five deceased friends and colleagues, and a bit of their lives and achievements


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Aim for HIV Test Record in London for World AIDS Day

via PinkNews, by Staff Writer

The record attempt will take place at G-A-Y Bar on London's Old Compton Street

G-A-Y Bar and the 56 Dean Street NHS clinic are seeking participants to set a new world record for the most HIV tests administered in an eight hour period.

Dr Alan McOwan, Lead Consultant at 56 Dean Street, said: “We will be using the world’s fastest HIV antibody test, which provides a result in just 60 seconds.

“One in 20 gay men in London has undiagnosed HIV and two-thirds of undiagnosed men think that they are negative. Testing early can add 16 years to someone’s life.”

G-A-Y will be donating £10 for every test performed at one of nine testing stations around the venue to the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

The record setting attempt will run from 2pm to 10pm on World AIDS Day, 1 December 2011, and will be held at the G-A-Y bar on Old Compton Street.

Registration forms can be picked up from the venue in advance or completed on the day

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Homophobia on World AIDS Day - Smithsonian Pulls AIDS Art Piece

Republicans and Catholic League president William Donahue have gotten the Smithsonian to take down a part of the museum's new queer exhibit Hide/Seek, claiming it is hate speech.

The video work A Fire in My Belly from NYC artist David Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992 from AIDS, featured ants crawling over Jesus Christ's body. It was, fittingly, supposed to represent the suffering of AIDS victims.

Rep. Jack Kingston called for the museums funds to be "looked into": "If they’ve got money to squander like this – of a crucifix being eaten by ants, of Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, men in chains, naked brothers kissing – then I think we should look at their budget."

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China to Open a Gay Bar for World AIDS Day

Via Towleroad -




The bar for gays will open tomorrow, World AIDS Day, financed by public funds to the tune of 120,000 yuan ($17, 576), the Beijing News said, offered by Dali Prefecture government, and is to be run by The Good Friend Center, a non-governmental organization for gay men. Yunnan has the highest number of HIV/AIDS cases in the country, official data indicates.

Zhang Jianbo, the bar's manager, told the Global Times that the bar will not be operated for merely commercial purposes but rather serve as a platform to raise awareness of its gay clients about safe sex practice among them. "We might not even sell beverages in the bar. We will turn the bar into a tribune to offer lectures and training to gay people in order to reduce AIDS infections among them," he said.

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Obama & the Fight to End HIV/AIDS

The AIDS Foundation of Chicago's President Mark Ishaug has a great piece up at Huffington Post this morning about President-elect Obama and the hopes for real change when it comes to AIDS policy in the United States.

Ishaug writes:

Today, on World AIDS Day, I wonder what Ron, Michael, Cecil, Charles, Gigi, Larry, and so many other Chicago AIDS activists gone-by would say of the incoming Obama Administration. Would they triumph in the President-elect's message of hope or lament the effects of HIV stigma, complacency, and competing priorities in muting needed change?

The estimated 1.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the U.S.--and the millions more who are concerned about and affected by the epidemic--ponder such questions as the global economy spirals deeper into recession and domestic and international security grows more fragile with each passing day.

Read Ishaug's entire article here, and check out the Obama campaign's fact sheet for fighting HIV/AIDS.