Free Republic

In the first week of public comments on a federal proposal to encourage male circumcision in the U.S., most people are telling Uncle Sam to leave the foreskins alone. “His body, his choice” and “Foreskin is not a birth defect” are among the hundreds of negative comments in the Federal Register against a proposed policy by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to advise that males of all ages be circumcised for health reasons. The strongest objections were for infant circumcision, since it is a “human rights” violation for a male to permanently lose a piece of his body...

Just 30 percent of Americans with H.I.V. have the virus in check, putting others at risk of infection, health officials said Tuesday. A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 840,000 of the 1.2 million people infected with H.I.V. in 2011 were not consistently taking drugs that suppress the virus. Of that number, 66 percent had been given an H.I.V. diagnosis but were not getting regular care; 20 percent did not know they were infected; 10 percent were prescribed antiretroviral medicines but were still not able to get the virus under control; and 4 percent were...

The number of people in the UK infected with HIV has reached an all-time high, new figures show. Nearly 110,000 are living with the condition, but around a quarter are unaware they have it. They are therefore at risk of passing on the virus to others through unprotected sex, experts warn.  The figures, from Public Health England (PHE), have been released ahead of National HIV Testing Week. They show that overall, more people are being diagnosed earlier. The proportion of people diagnosed with a late stage of HIV infection fell from 57 per cent in 2004 to 42 per cent...

In the article "An HIV-1 Transmission Case Possibly Associated with Manicure Care," Elaine Monteiro Matsuda and coauthors from Santo André AIDS Program, Adolfo Lutz Institute, and University of São Paulo, Brazil, describe the case of a 22-year-old woman who had advanced HIV infection but no apparent risk factors for acquiring HIV. She reported having shared manicure instruments years before with a cousin who was later found to be HIV-positive. Genetic analysis of the viruses from both patients suggests that they shared a common viral ancestor, indicating the possibility that HIV was transmitted via the manicure instruments.

Dallas police arrested Diamond Lawrence Thursday after she allegedly stole $11 worth of frozen food from a Walmart and then attacked the employee who stopped her. She scratched him in an attempt to draw blood and infect him with HIV, police said. Then told him, 'You're welcome.'A woman tried to swipe a stack of frozen dinners from a Texas Walmart by threatening a store clerk with HIV, police said. Dallas police arrested 25-year-old Diamond Lawrence Thursday after she allegedly attacked an employee in a bid to give him the virus and make off with $11 worth of stolen food. Lawrence...

A registered sex offender is charged with sexual assault and super-aggravated sexual assault of a child after raping a teen and a toddler, infecting them both with HIV, police say. David R. Wilson, 33, is accused of raping a 14-year-old girl and a two-year-old girl and infecting them with various sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, herpes, and chlamydia. The enhanced charge of super-aggravated sexual assault of a child is due to the age of the younger victim, who was just 23 months old at the time of the alleged abuse. Police began investigating Wilson in November 2013 after the toddler...

Britain and the United States have issued stark warnings that the international community will be responsible for a substantial loss of life in west Africa and a greater threat across the world unless the financial and medical response to the Ebola crisis is intensified. As the World Health Organisation (WHO) admitted mishandling the early stages of the Ebola outbreak in west Africa, US secretary of state John Kerry said a failure to respond could turn Ebola into “a scourge like HIV or polio”. In some of his strongest remarks since the outbreak of the virus, Kerry criticised the international community...

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/risk_HIV_AfricanAmericans.pdfThe estimated rate of new HIV infections for African American women was 20 times that of white women

The ongoing – and expanding –Ebola situation and how it's being handled (or, more accurately NOT being handled) has a parallel with the HIV panic of a number of years ago. It may ALSO be another manifestation of the schizophrenic nature of the hard leftists who unfortunately sit at the levers of power in this country and whose double-mindedness should now be clear to all but the dullest among us. Allow me to explain. A San Francisco (where else?) based and HIV infected “leader”of the homosexual community began a serious campaign encouraging fellow HIV carriers to attempt to bypass or...

Democrats are demanding the Obama administration update its policy to allow gay men to donate blood, tissue and organs. On Monday, a group of lawmakers led by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) sent a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell asking her to change current policy to allow men who have had sex with other men to donate blood, organs and tissue. The lawmakers said the current ban promotes stereotypes that gay men have HIV and discriminates against them.

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...

Well before the Ebola virus was brought to the U.S. by a man traveling from Liberia, it was wreaking havoc in the West African country, where nearly 2,000 people have died during the worst Ebola outbreak in history. Now, some doctors in that country are trying new ways of treating Ebola-infected patients. Gorbee Logan, a doctor in rural Liberia, has given at least 15 Ebola patients lamivudine, which is considered a long-term and effective drug to treat HIV patients. All but two of them survived, Logan told CNN last week. Since that interview, Logan has been in contact with Anthony...

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.

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...

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 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 study released Monday at the conference shows that vulnerable communities in Nigeria fared far worse after legislation was passed criminalizing gay male sex. And in a panel scheduled for Wednesday , researchers were expected to discuss way to help advocates, doctors and patients combat stigma. The past year has seen both unprecedented advances in gay rights - with expanded marriage equality in the U.S. – and even more significant setbacks, with discriminatory laws passed in Nigeria and Uganda and Russia's president Vladimir Putin speaking out against gay rights, said Richard Parker, a professor of sociomedical sciences at the Mailman...

Results of a new study show HIV rates have declined in the US. According to the report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), from 2002 to 2011 there was a 30 percent decline in diagnosis of HIV nationwide. Despite the decrease in diagnosis, challenges still remain. Trends in HIV The study authors looked at trends in HIV during the time period among persons age 13 and older, finding 493,372 persons were diagnosed with HIV in the US. The results came from data that is part of the National HIV Surveillance System of the CDC. The biggest...