Gay and AIDS community condemn Frieden CDC appointment

“The bad news is that [Frieden’s] propensity to ignore the concerns of affected communities may hinder his ultimate success in achieving the goals of aligning public health with the best that science has to offer.”

via Housing Works, by David Thorpe

This week’s appointment of New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provoked dismay among AIDS advocates and the gay press in New York City and beyond (with some exceptions).

As Health Commissioner, Frieden tried to do away with informed consent for HIV tests, made an Orwellian power grab for the medical information of people living with HIV, and infamously mishandled the so-called AIDS “superbug” case in 2005. As head of the CDC, Frieden may try to bully states into adopting routine testing without informed consent and will almost certainly take a step away from the real concerns of real people living with HIV/AIDS.

Read the rest.

Of interest in Gay City News:
Policy Regarding Bathhouses and Other Commercial Sex Venues in New York City

Killer Gay Sex!

Below is an essay, an AMAZING and MUST-READ essay, by LifeLube's very smart, very articulate and very fabulous pal Tony Valenzuela (remember him from the cover above?)

Just published in POZ, it centers on the controversy from a few years back regarding the New York man with the so-called HIV "supervirus." With it, he hopes to be a part of, as well as encourage, a dialog concerning the pathologizing of gay sex and the extraordinary need for an assets-based, holistic approach to gay men's lives and health.

Why do we, members of the LGBT community, continue to stigmatize one another, point fingers and shriek at "bad gays?"

Why do we continue to allow public health authorities, the media and others outside our community to whip up hysteria and terror at our expense?

Killer Gay Sex!

by Tony Valenzuela

The clueless tabloid and public health hysteria over man-on-man sex may be hindering HIV prevention efforts. From an imaginary "super strain" of HIV to the sci-fi MRSA superbug: What is it about gay sex that makes U.S. health officials want to play Chicken Little with AIDS prevention and public safety?

In February 2005, a New York man with a multidrug-resistant strain of HIV and a crystal meth dependency became the source of the most reported AIDS story of the decade, but he had never, until now, spoken about his trying ordeal. A slew of chilling claims was made about this man – that he carried a new, more virulent strain of HIV dubbed a "supervirus" that progressed from infection to AIDS in as little as two months; that his meth-induced promiscuity would instigate a deadly epidemic potentially undoing a quarter century of progress against HIV; that he signified what many in the gay community had been dreading would occur, given that gay men —stubbornly, recklessly— refused to give up their uniquely nefarious brand of promiscuity. It is, then, no less remarkable that these allegations that gripped the world with renewed fears of gay plague proved comprehensively false, yet the cycle of alarm that equates gay men with disease—as seen once again this past January in San Francisco with a drug-resistant "gay staph" scare—continues unabated to this day. By the time the man with the "supervirus" disappeared from the headlines, those still paying attention would learn he did not have a never-before-seen strain of HIV nor did he set off a new epidemic. Instead, he carried a very rare and difficult-to-treat multidrug-resistant virus that is today fully suppressed as he adheres to a complicated regimen of antiviral medications.

In Paris, the same year the "supervirus" story broke, the late gay-rights pioneer and scholar Eric Rofes declared to an audience of international activists, "The pathologizing of gay men's communities and cultures and spaces is the most powerful challenge we face to promoting gay men's health." Three years later, this man's story lays bare how far too many who work and report on gay health narrowly imagine the sex lives of gay and bisexual men inside a realm of disease and dysfunction.

Read the rest on POZ.

And please come back to LifeLube, your sweet spot, and leave a comment. Surely, Shirley you will have opinions about this essay!

aidsmap - New light on the “New York patient”: `super-bug` fears were exaggerated by media

by Derek Thaczuk, Tuesday, April 10, 2007
In early 2005, a gay New York City man was reported to have been infected with an extremely virulent, multi-drug-class-resistant (MDR) strain of HIV, causing very rapid progression to extremely low CD4 cell counts. Public health officials in the city raised the alarm, and US newspapers reported that a new, highly agressive drug-resistant strain of HIV was at large in the city's gay male population.

But now, two years later, the first comprehensive report on the case in a medical journal shows that almost all the initial media - and public health - assumptions about the case turned out to be wrong.

Ongoing analysis of the “New York City patient” has now suggested that he may have been initially infected by a dual-(CXCR4 and CCR5) –tropic virus, rather than having developed it himself, and that the case was highly unusual. The analysis also suggests that his rapid CD4 count drops were associated with primary infection, rather than the extremely rapid chronic infection first reported. The new analysis and commentary are published in the May 1^st Journal of Infectious Diseases.

The original case was extremely well publicised; the most pertinent facts about the NYC patient were as follows:

• Diagnosed HIV-positive in December 2004.

• The date of his infection was not certain, but was no more than 20 months prior to diagnosis.

• He was a heavy crystal methamphetamine user who had frequent, anonymous, unprotected sex.

• He was deemed a rapid progressor and diagnosed with AIDS based on low CD4 cell counts (80 cells/mm³ at diagnosis, 28 cells/mm³ in January).

• His virus was dual (CXCR4 and CCR5) -tropic, multi-drug resistant (although susceptible to efavirenz and T-20), and actually had higher replicative fitness than wild-type (1.38-fold fitter) despite its resistance mutations.

The source of the NYC patient’s infection (the “source patient”) was soon identified. His viral strain was also found to be highly drug resistant, but much less fit (.041-fold compared to wild-type), and apparently CCR5-tropic only. The source patient was not a rapid progressor; he had been on various antiretroviral combinations since 1995.

The source patient’s regular sexual partner was also identified, and found to have been superinfected: he was carrying a recombinant MDR strain of his own original virus (which had been drug-susceptible up until 2001), and the source patient’s.

Two years later: Why did the NYC patient progress so quickly?

Read the rest here.