Free Republic

A rule that prevents many HIV-positive immigrants and travelers from entering the United States will likely be lifted before the year is up, after the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this month recommended changing the regulation. Immigration and HIV/AIDS advocacy groups have been working to repeal the 22-year-old rule, which they call discriminatory, dangerous, and debilitating to the strength of the U.S. scientific community. A large number of foreigners with the human immunodeficiency virus would benefit from the change, the groups say, when these individuals would finally be able to enter the country to see loved ones, attend...

Obama urges Americans get tested for HIV 33 mins ago WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama on Saturday urged his fellow Americans to get tested for HIV in an effort to reduce transmission of the virus that causes AIDS. "On this 14th commemoration of National HIV Testing Day, I urge Americans to take control of their own health -- and protect those they love -- by getting tested for HIV and working to reduce HIV transmission," Obama said in a statement. "While its impacts are not evenly spread -- infection rates are particularly high among gay and bisexual men, African...

Health officials in Los Angeles said Friday that 22 actors in adult sex movies had contracted H.I.V. since 2004, when a previous outbreak led to efforts to protect pornography industry employees. The officials accused an industry-supported health clinic of failing to cooperate with state investigations and of failing to protect not only industry workers but their sexual partners as well. “We have an industry that is exposing workers to life-threatening diseases as part of their employment,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of public health for Los Angeles County. “That is outrageous and anachronistic. These infections are virtually entirely preventable.” The...

D.C. HIV/AIDS Rate Higher Than West Africa March 18, 2009 · According to a new report issued by Washington, D.C., officials, the HIV rate in the nation's capital is the highest in the country. Nearly 3 percent of the city's residents are living with HIV/AIDS, a rate higher than in West Africa. Cornelius Baker, formerly of Washington's renowned Whitman-Walker clinic, and Patricia Nalls, of The Women's Collective, discuss the epidemic.

<p>Men having sex with men has remained the disease's leading mode of transmission.</p> <p>Heterosexual sex was the principal mode of transmission for blacks with the disease, 33 percent. Men having sex with men was the chief mode of transmission for white residents, 78 percent; and Latinos, 49 percent. Black women represent more than a quarter of HIV cases in the District, and most, about 58 percent, were infected through heterosexual sex. About a quarter of black women were infected through drug use.</p>

HIV prevalence is higher among non-religious Kenyans compared to faith practitioners, the first ever large study to interrogate the relationship between religion and the disease in the country has found out. The government-sponsored Kenya AIDS Indicator Survey (KAIS) whose final findings will be released in a couple of weeks, indicates that prevalence levels among non-believers stands at 7.7 per cent against the national average of 7.1 per cent. When preliminary findings of the survey were released in 2008, they did not include the new findings. The prevalence levels are even different among various faiths, with the highest being among Protestants...

In the United States, African American men and women continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases noted in a statement issued to coincide with the 9th annual National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on February 7. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, African Americans make up 12 percent of the U.S. population but account for nearly half of all new HIV infections and almost half of all Americans living with HIV. According to federal health officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),...

Anthony De La Rosa's public MySpace profile might cause employers or college admissions officers to flinch: The 18-year-old listed "weed" among his interests and posted a photo of himself labeled "joint," in which he looks almost ready to smoke one. Still, the Milwaukee resident doesn't regret broadcasting his behavior online. De La Rosa said, "I do not care what anybody thinks about me." Or who sees his page. But a new study co-led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher suggests not all MySpace users realize how public their so-called private lives are - and many made changes when warned about...

An unusually detailed study of people newly infected with H.I.V. in the United States has confirmed that the majority of new cases occur among gay and bisexual men and that blacks are most at risk. But the data show that whites and blacks tend to be infected at different times in their lives with the virus that causes AIDS. Most new infections of white gay and bisexual men occur when the men are in their 30s and 40s, the study found, while black gay and bisexual men are more likely to be infected in their teens and 20s. The results...

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Young black gay men, black women and white gay men in their 30s and 40s are much more likely to be newly infected with HIV than other groups in the United States, according to a new analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The analysis -- based on figures showing that the HIV infection rate for 2006 is much worse than previously thought -- looks at the number of new HIV infections and who gets them. The study appears in this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. It shows 53 percent of the estimated...

Bill Clinton made a plea yesterday for a new emphasis on monogamy as a key element in the battle against Aids. The former US president, not noted for his ability to keep his own marriage vows, said it was very important to change people's attitudes to sex. In an interview with the BBC recorded in Africa, Mr Clinton said that increasing support for monogamy was not just a problem for the continent worst hit by Aids but for the world. "To pretend we can ever get hold of this without dealing with that – the idea of unprotected sexual relations...

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality is calling on church and political leaders to confront the unhealthy lifestyle choices contributing to the majority of the country's HIV infections. The 17th International AIDS Conference will wrap up in Mexico City on Friday (August 8). In attendance is California mega-church pastor Rick Warren who says HIV-AIDS is a "global pandemic" that the church can help solve by "show[ing] compassion, kindness and the love of Christ." However, Peter LaBarbera says while he commends the idea of a church-based effort to fight AIDS in Africa, he is troubled that many church and...

War on AIDS will be long, more funds needed: UN 14 hours ago MEXICO CITY (AFP) — A global conference on AIDS was to get down to business on Monday after hearing that victory against the disease lay beyond the farthest horizon and endangered lives could only be saved with inflows of money...

Updated federal estimates of the annual number of new HIV infections in the United States, released today, reveal that while the AIDS epidemic here is worse than previously thought, prevention efforts appear to be having some effect. Even though the number of Americans living with HIV has risen by more than a quarter million people since 1998 -- largely the result of life-extending antiretroviral drugs -- the number of new cases each year has declined slightly over that period. That suggests that a person's likelihood of transmitting the virus to someone else is substantially lower now than it was a...

CNN reported July 11 that according to the National Institutes of Health, U.S. teen pregnancies in 2006 rose for the first time since 1991. Translation: "One-third of girls in the U.S. got pregnant before age 20." In the same article, CNN reported a "striking decrease" in the percentage of eighth graders smoking, down from 10 percent in 1996 to 3 percent in 2007. While federal health experts were at a loss to explain the spike in teen pregnancies, a Centers for Disease Control official said smoking abated due to "efforts convincing kids and adults not to smoke," according to CNN....

Diagnoses of H.I.V. and AIDS in men who have sex with men rose significantly between 2001 and 2006 while declining in other demographic groups, the federal Centers for Disease Control reported Thursday. The increase in diagnoses was especially high among males between the ages of 13 and 24, with an annual increase of 12.4 percent, compared to 1.5 percent for men overall. The annual increase was still higher among young African-American men who have sex with men, nearly 15 percent. Among African-American men of all ages who have sex with men, the annual increase in diagnoses was 1.9 percent. Experts...

The number of young homosexual men being newly diagnosed with HIV infection is rising by 12 percent a year, with the steepest upward trend in young black men, according to a new report. The double-digit increase in young gay men is about 10 times higher than in the homosexual community overall, where the number of new infections is going up about 1.5 percent a year. The report, released yesterday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appears to confirm impressions that a "second-wave" AIDS epidemic is underway in gay America.

How should society deal with a behavior -– a lifestyle choice -- that places those who engage in the behavior at a high risk for poor health and grave disease? If the behavior in question is smoking, American society does everything in its power to discourage the behavior to the point of passing laws that make it illegal to puff in public places, even if the public venue is privately owned. However, if the behavior that results in probable poor health and potentially fatal disease is promiscuous sex, particularly homosexual sex, society only encourages those who engage in the behavior...

The Aids scare was one of the most distorted, duplicitous and cynical public health panics of the last 30 yearsFinally we have a high-level admission that there is no threat of a global Aids pandemic among heterosexuals. After 25 years of official scaremongering about western societies being ravaged by the disease – with salacious, tombstone-illustrated government propaganda warning people to wear a condom or "die of ignorance" – the head of the World Health Organisation's HIV/Aids department says there is no need for heterosexuals to fret. Kevin de Cock, who has headed the global battle against Aids, said at the...

WASHINGTON, — Sexual activity is on the rise among U.S. teens while their use of contraceptives is sliding in the other direction, according to a study released on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Click here to view the study.Approximately 48 percent of 14,041 high school students said they have had sex, representing a 2 percent hike since 2005; however, teens still are having less sex today than their counterparts did in the 1990s. The 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System study showed a 2 percent drop-off in the percentage of teens who said they used condoms...