Watch out for gay men near you!

I read a headline in the Sydney Morning Herald weekend edition that pronounced "One in five gay men in US has HIV". This is a classic case of the press having a responsibility for the stuff they publish. Its a fact that when most people open the paper they generally might only read the first paragraph or two of an article. This is really giving the impression that if you're in a room of 25 gay men, 5 of them will definitely be HIV positive. Its not helping the issue at all, and is reminiscent of the fear mongering campaign that began in the 1980s. Why not give the article a less explosive name?

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention tested more than 8000 men in 21 cities in 2008, and found that even as infection rates were climbing among men who have sex with men, young, sexually active gay men and those in minority groups were least likely to know their health status, while the rates of other at-risk groups - heterosexuals and intravenous drug users - were falling.

The findings were published this week to precede US National Gay Men's HIV Awareness Day on Monday.

The stigma around this disease is one reason why people don't like talking about it. If you don't talk about it you don't know about it. If you don't know about it then...?

This stigma creates ignorance and the widespread impact of it is really underestimated. I've met people who are still convinced you can get HIV from a toilet set, from a mosquito bite or from kissing.

Hey, I'm not a doctor but that's a load of crap!

Check out this dude who claims there is no connection between HIV and AIDS and that Barack Obama may have been elected because he was able to hypnotise voters.

Wow, this explains so much.