HIV – Crasstalk

World AIDS Day: Good News and Bad Education

Today is World AIDS Day. The 24th World AIDS Day, to be exact. Let’s take a look at some sobering statistics, shall we?

According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), as of January 2010, an estimated 34 million people were living with HIV worldwide, up 17% from 2001. This number reflects both an increase in the number of infections and a reduction in AIDS-related deaths due to increased access to effective antiretroviral therapy. UNAIDS also reports that the number of people dying of AIDS-related causes fell to 1.8 million in 2010, down from a peak of 2.2 million in the mid-2000s. Promisingly, approximately 2.5 million deaths were prevented in low- and middle-income countries since 1995 due to the introduction of antiretroviral therapy. Much of that success has come in the past two years when rapid scale-up of access to treatment occurred; in 2010 alone, 700,000 AIDS-related deaths were averted. Continue reading →

Life After Project Runway

Now that Project Runway Season Nine is safely put to bed, let’s take a look back towards last season. The judges decided, for some reason, that Mondo Guerra was not to win Season Eight, even though he was clearly in the lead and favored to win. Let’s catch up with Mondo and see what he’s been up to and answer the question: Is there life after Project Runway? Continue reading →

AIDS PSA: Does Fear Work?

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I have very mixed feelings about this new HIV/AIDS PSA from the NYC Department of Health (warning: nsfw unless you work in an anal cancer research lab):
HIV PSA

A lot of folks are up in arms about how the ad stigmatizes people living with HIV. Fear campaigns don’t actually encourage testing or prevention, they assert (without evidence).

I feel like there’s a generational disconnect, though, because while people over 35 or so probably have some memory of the worst years of the epidemic, very young guys do not. At all. The only message young gay guys have heard is about how AIDS is a manageable illness. But that’s not the whole story. The fact is, young gays are not using protection because they don’t think AIDS is a big deal, hence the HIV transmission rates for very young guys are shockingly high (such as an estimated 40% of young African-American men who have sex with men in NYC infected with HIV).

What do you think? Overkill? It reminds me of the cigarette ads with disgusting photos of cancerous lungs. Which actually do work, with me at least. If by work you mean nauseate.