Bill Weintraub:

Here we go again.

Canada has seen a 16% increase in HIV prevalence in four years, but, says a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency, "I wouldn't interpret this data to say the programs (to combat the disease) are not working..."

And then he adds, "but certainly more needs to be done."

His reasoning, if you can call it that, defies common sense and logic, and everything else associated with ordinary rational human problem solving.

If the HIV prevention programs were working, the rate of new infection would be decreasing.

Not increasing.

And when he says "more needs to be done," what he means, as we all know, is more of the same.

So the Canadian Public Health Agency intends to use "more" of the same failed policies to prevent HIV infection which experience has already demonstrated do NOT prevent HIV infection.

How do they get away with that?

For one thing, because any critique of their actions is attributed to homophobia.

So they have no effective critics.

Now, what's actually causing these increases?

Here's a clue: "The majority of overall cases, 51 percent, stem from men having sex with men."

Although other groups are seeing increases, the majority of the cases are among gay men, and they are what are fueling the epidemic.

They constitute a reservoir of HIV and drug-resistant HIV which is being spread to "the general population."

And how is HIV being spread among these men?

Anal penetration.

Which we now know, thanks to Buchbinder, is unsafe with or without a condom.

So: the only way to bring HIV infection rates down is to decrease the prevalence of anal penetration.

Because anal is the risk behavior.

And the only factor which truly matters in HIV transmission is risk behavior.

Not homophobia or poverty or depression or low self-esteem.

Among gay males, there's a specific risk behavior which spreads HIV.

Absent that risk behavior, there's virtually no HIV transmission.

Notice also that this 16% increase in HIV prevalence occurred under a liberal Canadian government.

The government in power now is, by Canadian standards, "conservative," but it was under a liberal, pro-gay, and pro-gay marriage government that this failure of prevention took place.

This was not the fault of abstinence programs or the religious right.

It was and is a failure of condom campaigns, and the pansexualist and analist ideology which informs those campaigns.

Canada, remember, is where those bath-house tours for virgins were and presumably still are taking place, and where AIDS "prevention experts" were distributing obscene playing cards which featured acts such as felching -- acts which are intrinsically dangerous.

That's the reality of the analist approach to HIV carried to its logical conclusion.

Bizarre and dangerous acts are touted.

Frot is ignored.

HIV prevalence, along with the prevalence of other anally-transmitted diseases, INCREASES.

What will happen to the 58,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Canada -- and the more than one million living with the disease in America -- and the more than 40 million living with the disease worldwide?

Those who don't get treatment will die.

The rest can now expect to spend the rest of their lives on toxic medications.

And as they age, according to this article in the Sacramento Bee, their problems will become worse:

HIV's ranks get a little grayer

Few expected to deal with infection and aging at same time.

By Tomio Geron -- Bee Staff Writer

July 31, 2006

Gary Myerscough of Sacramento thought his life was over when he was diagnosed with HIV in 1992.

"It was more or less considered a death sentence," Myerscough said.

He wasn't "one of those people who ran up credit cards," expecting to die in a couple of years, but he didn't expect to live long, either.

Today he is 60 years old.

He is happy to be alive, but has to juggle caring for his high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and HIV.

Myerscough is one of a growing number of middle-aged and elderly HIV-positive people who face medical complications and problems securing housing and appropriate medical care, according to a study by the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America in New York released today.

Due to more effective anti-retroviral drugs, people with HIV are living longer, including many in the Sacramento area.

"We, like everyone, have a large patient population living with the epidemic for 15 or 20 years now in their 60s or 70s," said Dr. Jason Flamm, who treats HIV patients at Kaiser Sacramento. In addition, Flamm said, he is seeing "new infections for a smaller number of patients in their 70s."

More than 70 percent of patients receiving federally funded HIV services in Sacramento, Placer and El Dorado counties are over 40 years old and more than 27 percent are over 50, said Adrienne Rogers, Ryan White CARE program coordinator for Sacramento County.

..

But as health providers prepare for the aging of baby boomers, the study shows that most providers are not prepared to treat the aging HIV-positive population.

Stephen Karpiak, one of the leaders of the study of 1,000 HIV-positive people over age 50 in New York City, said HIV doctors aren't ready for issues associated with aging patients, while doctors who treat other diseases associated with aging aren't necessarily prepared for dealing with HIV.

Karpiak also said there have not been enough studies of how anti-HIV drugs might interact with the variety of other drugs often prescribed to older people.

Myerscough had a heart attack last August and underwent bypass surgery. He also has diabetes.

Each day, he takes nine HIV pills, four insulin shots and 16 pills for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other ailments. He has to check in with his doctor regularly to make sure the drugs are working and not reacting badly with one another.

Some anti-HIV drugs cause high cholesterol, kidney problems or inflammation of the pancreas, requiring continual monitoring of patients, said Dr. Paolo Troia, medical director of CARES, an HIV/AIDS health and service center in Sacramento.

..

[And, adds another report, "The Karpiak study finds that HIV-positive adults over age 50 are 13 times as likely to experience high levels of depression as the general population of the city and that many people surveyed had medical conditions associated with age including arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure and vision loss."]

[emphases mine]

Bill Weintraub:

These articles go on and on, but you get the picture.

Not only are the HIV-antiretrovirals toxic in and of themselves, but they interact in dangerous ways with the regular meds that people need as they grow older.

What's unreal about the situation is that NOTHING IS DONE to truly prevent new HIV infection.

Instead, the AIDS Inc ANAL Inc juggernaut just rolls on, ultimately crushing all in its path.

What's also important to understand is that HIV infection in the US and Canada is occurring primarily in the ghettoized space reserved for "gay people" created by heterosexualization.

This is something we discuss at length in THE POWER OF THE MASCULINE.

And I urge you to read that message thread, which now has its own, richly illustrated, page.

Here's an excerpt:

Gay men are one of the most ardent supporters of heterosexualisation. They represent the dust bin created by the heterosexualised society to contain the mutilated / negativised remnants of male-male sex that survives after the intense oppression of them in the mainstream...

Gay men (when I say gay men I mean feminine identified males who like men) derive immense power from the heterosexual society. In fact they owe the heterosexual society their existence.

"the mutilated / negativised remnants of male-male sex"

What has happened in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK and the EU, is that masculine-identified men who are able to acknowledge their attraction to other men -- have been tossed into that dustbin.

Where many have been acculturated into analism, been penetrated anally, contracted HIV, and died.

Or now face a lifetime on toxic medication.

So we need to be clear just how high the stakes are.

Our job is to reach out to as many men as we can.

Those masculine-identified men who are denying their normal and natural same-sex needs and desires need to hear there's a way for them to bond with and LOVE another MAN which will not make them sick, and which will not sacrifice their Masculinity or their Manhood.

Those males already acculturated into analism, and who are in varying degree now feminized, also need to hear that message.

Otherwise, they'll all die.

If not physically, spiritually and emotionally.

They must hear our message.

There's no other way to save them.

Fact is, virtually all gay-identified men, and many straight-identified men, are at great risk.

And that includes most of the men who visit this site.

I know that sounds alarmist.

But I've seen it before.

I've seen what appears to be a healthy and "vibrant" community brought to its knees --

in just a few years.

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.