Free Republic

Three decades after the world witnessed HIV begin to take its devastating human toll, scientists have isolated where the pandemic started in Kinshasa, in what was then Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The revelation is outlined in the journal Science, which dated the origin of the pandemic as early as the 1920s. While the virus is thought to have crossed into the human population years earlier, the Guardian notes, it remained largely localized until it reached Kinshasa, which catapulted throughout the region, and then world. A confluence of social factors led to what the authors call a...

The origin of the Aids pandemic has been traced to the 1920s in the city of Kinshasa, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, scientists say. An international team of scientists say a "perfect storm" of population growth, sex and railways allowed HIV to spread. A feat of viral archaeology was used to find the pandemic's origin, the team report in the journal Science. They used archived samples of HIV's genetic code to trace its source, with evidence pointing to 1920s Kinshasa. Their report says a roaring sex trade, rapid population growth and unsterilised needles used in health...

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has issued a new report that highlights the potentially lethal dangers of anal sex. In their most recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the health agency said that while men with same-sex attraction make up only 2 percent of the total population, they accounted for 63 percent of all newly-diagnosed HIV/AIDS cases in 2010.  More than half of all AIDS-sufferers in the U.S. are homosexual, and most of them contracted it by engaging in anal sex. “Most gay and bisexual men acquire HIV through anal sex, which is the riskiest type of sex for...

We agree to meet outside Pret A Manger on Southampton Row, central London. Waiting in the distance, through the grimy sunlight and the clatter of lawyers, City workers and literary types – all macchiatos and adrenaline – stands a frail-looking figure, bent over and clutching a walking stick. As I approach he smiles. His name is Hugh, he is HIV positive and he is 35 years old. What follows is a story we never hear. It is a tale of seizures and brain cancers, of mental illness short-circuiting anti-HIV medication. It is a story, far from unique, that has been...

Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) make up 2 percent of the U.S. population but are the group most definitively affected by HIV, with 63 percent of those newly infected by HIV representing this group. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly “Morbidity and Mortality” report shows that among persons newly infected with HIV in 2010, 63 percent were men who have sex with other men. Among Americans living with HIV, 52 percent were MSM – and a significant number of men with HIV are not receiving treatment. “Gay, bisexual, and other men who...

Gay and bisexual men represent an estimated 2% of the U.S. population but more than half of all people living with HIV and 66% of new HIV infections. They are the only population group in the United States for which HIV infections are rising. Projections have shown that if current trends continue, half of all gay and bisexual men will be HIV-positive by age 50.

In North Korea, political life revolves around Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. Yet Kim appeared to have skipped a high-level governmental meeting Thursday – and no one seems to know quite why. Televised footage of the reopening of North Korea's Supreme People’s Assembly did not show Kim at the meeting, the Associated Press reports. South Korean officials tasked with keeping tabs on the North now believe that it is the first time that Kim has missed a meeting at Pyongyang's parliament since his father died in December 2011. In fact, Kim, usually a focus of North Korean state media, has...

Survey results released Thursday suggest a troubling complacency toward HIV among gay and bisexual men in the United States that public health experts say could undermine efforts to slow down or even stop spread of the disease. Fewer than 20 percent of gay and bisexual men have been tested for HIV in the previous six months — as recommended by national public health agencies — and nearly a third have never been tested at all, according to a survey conducted this summer by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The same survey found that gay and bisexual men were largely uninformed about...

Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Rene Garcia presented the University of Miami with a check for $1 million for HIV/AIDS research Monday morning. Scott stopped by the university’s Miller School of Medicine to highlight funding in the “It’s Your Money Tax Cut Budget” for HIV/AIDS research.

A West Side priest pleaded guilty this morning to soliciting sex from an undercover ranger at Edgewater Park last October while failing to divulge he was carrying the AIDS virus. Under provisions of a plea bargain reached with prosecutors, the Rev. James McGonegal, 69, the former pastor of St. Ignatius of Antioch Church, will enter an early intervention program. The agreement allows McGonegal to avoid a felony conviction if he successfully completes the program. At that point, the case would be dismissed and his record expunged. He also must perform 50 hours of community service and continue out-patient treatment begun...

An immediate and indefinite moratorium has been placed on all porn filming after another performer may have tested positive for HIV. lRelated Porn actress' positive HIV test roils adult entertainment world L.A. Now Porn actress' positive HIV test roils adult entertainment world See all related 8 “There was a positive test at one of our testing centers. Confirmatory tests are not yet back, but we are taking every precaution to protect performers and to determine if there’s been any threat to the performer pool,” said Diane Duke, chief executive of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult...

Gay Bathhouses Across US Face An Uncertain Future As the number of bathhouses declines, some are adding new amenities and advertising online to keep their doors open Saturday 23 August 2014 11.09 EDT In their heyday in the late 1970s, there were nearly 200 bathhouses in the US. Today, there are fewer than 70 nationwide. Gay bathhouses that once remained in the shadows to stay in business are now seeking attention to keep their doors open. Some are doing aggressive online advertising and community outreach. Others tout upscale amenities like plush towels and marble baths. A bathhouse in Ohio has...

Gay bathhouses that once remained in the shadows to stay in business are now seeking attention to keep their doors open. Some are doing aggressive online advertising and community outreach. Others tout their upscale amenities like plush towels and marble baths. A bathhouse in Ohio has even added hotel rooms and a nightclub. […] In the heyday of bathhouses in the late 1970s, there were nearly 200 gay bathhouses in cities across the U.S., but by 1990, the total had dropped to approximately 90, according to Damron, the publisher of an annual gay travel guide. In the last decade, bathhouses,...

SciShow News reports some promising new findings about the worldwide fight against HIV, including insights about how we can make the most of one of our newest weapons against HIV: circumcision.

A new report offers good and bad news about the AIDS epidemic in the United States: The annual diagnosis rate of HIV, the virus that causes the disease, has dropped by one-third in the general population but has climbed among young gay and bisexual males. Significantly fewer heterosexuals, drug users and women were diagnosed each year with HIV, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the annual diagnosis rate more than doubled for young gay and bisexual males. The push for safer sex may be falling on deaf ears in a generation too...

The annual rate of diagnosis with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, fell by a third in the United States between 2002 and 2011, researchers reported on Saturday. Fewer people in all U.S. groups tested positive for human immunodeficiency virus except for gay and bisexual men ages 13 to 24 and over 45, they wrote in a special issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Among men who have sex with men, unprotected risk behaviors in the presence of high prevalence and unsuppressed viral load may continue to drive HIV transmission," the report said. From 2002 to 2011,...

HIV infections are rising among gay men in many parts of the world, the World Health Organization warned Friday, urging all men who have sex with men to take antiretroviral drugs to prevent infection. "We are seeing exploding epidemics," warned Gottfried Hirnschall, who heads WHO's HIV department. Infection rates are rising again among men who have sex with men -- the group at the epicentre of AIDS pandemic when it first emerged 33 years ago, he told reporters in Geneva. While images of skeletal men dying of AIDS in the 1980s pushed the world to act, a younger generation that...

A US girl born with the AIDS virus and in remission for years despite stopping treatment now shows signs that she still harbors HIV – and therefore is not cured. The news is a setback to hopes that very early treatment with powerful HIV drugs might reverse an infection that has seemed permanent once it takes hold. The Mississippi girl is now nearly 4. As recently as March, doctors had said that she seemed free of HIV despite not having been on Aids drugs for about two years. That was a medical first. But on Thursday, doctors said tests last...

... In many jurisdictions, people who know they are H.I.V.-positive are legally required to disclose this status to potential sexual partners, even when they intend to engage in relatively safe and protected sex. Why do our disclosure policies single out this group, and not, for example, people with other incurable, or possibly fatal, infectious diseases? Why do most policies demand transparency between sexual partners in regard to their H.I.V.-status, but not in regard to past behaviors that may have caused a yet undetected H.I.V. infection, such as intravenous drug use or unprotected sex with partners who do not regularly get...

HOUMA, La. (WWL)– A Terrebonne Parish school teacher is behind bars for having sex with a student and exposing them to the AIDS virus. Terrebonne Parish sheriff’s deputies arrested Derrick Nesby, 37, Wednesday at H.L. Bourgeois High School, the school where he teaches. The 37-year-old is accused of having sex with a 16-year-old male student at the school. “We can establish the fact that there was an encounter that happened,” said Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Chief of Detectives Malcolm Wolfe. WLTX – UPDATE: Friday morning, Terrebonne Parish detectives officially charged Nesby with the additional charge of intentional exposure of the AIDS...