Maybe they figure it this way: they're in the 40s, the life expectancy at sero-conversion is now around 30 years, and everybody dies of something.

New data released by the city's department of health show that the highest rates of new HIV infections are among gay men 35 to 49 years old. These findings are alarming and, to some, perplexing.


Why are so many mid-life gay men who were able to avoid HIV infection for so long now taking risks that are exposing them to the disease?


...

Mid-life gay men have lived most of their adult lives during the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, experiencing the loss of partners, friends, and people in their community. As witnesses to so much illness, death, and loss, their voices have seldom been heard and their needs largely overlooked. Having once been the activists, caregivers, and volunteers for our community, many mid-life gay men now feel invisible and isolated. Not only lives were lost, during this period, but entire social networks and ways of living disappeared too.


The traumatic effects of AIDS-related losses were closely studied between 1988 and 1996. By 1988, gay men had already on average lost six lovers, friends, and/or family members. Researchers have shown that people who had more experiences of AIDS-related loss also had higher levels of traumatic stress response symptoms and recreational drug and sedative use.


However, almost no effort has been made to study the long-term impact of the AIDS epidemic on mid-life gay men, or to determine whether current elevated levels of risk-taking behaviors in gay men are related to the trauma of surviving one of the worst epidemics in our history. That lack of attention may now have come home to roost - in rising rates of risky behavior that are secondary to the effects of unprocessed traumatic responses to decades-old losses that haunt our daily conscious and unconscious lives as mid-life gay men.

...

Handing a 45-year-old man another safer sex brochure just isn't going to do the job. We urgently need to create programs that directly address the real reasons that gay men engage in high-risk behavior.

Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and HIV/AIDS (BONELA) Director, Christine Stegling has said that denying prisoners access to condoms is depriving them of their right to health.

[..]

A lawyer, Mboki Chilisa said in relation to men who have sex with other men, the gay society in Botswana remains a voiceless and invincible minority, not out of shame but to avoid discrimination.
"Criminalization of homosexuality will forever make them a minority. It is unfair to penalize homosexuality just because it is merely different from heterosexual relationships. Men who are raped in prisons don't only lose their dignity but are also made to feel unworthy of protection by law. I urge BONELA to undertake a campaign to decriminalize the law on homosexuality,"Chilisa said

An AIDS and Human Rights researcher with the University of Pretoria, Femi Odunsi said that the law is made for the people and not the other way round.

To emphasize his argument, he said "Are we made for the penal code or it for us?" According to Odunsi, research on AIDS in Botswana recommends the provision of condoms to prisoners as a means of combating the spread of HIV/AIDS. "There is an alternative, and that is changing the law as a principle of necessity," Odunsi said.

Gay Men Fighting Aids is using an internet community resource to ask for feedback on their new advertising campaigns.

The charity, which was founded in 1992, is responsible for HIV and STI prevention strategy and delivery in the London area.

They produce three new mass media campaigns a year, which run in the gay press.

They are aimed at the gay male community. GMFA also provide courses about sexual well being for gay men.

Their new site on MySpace will allow people to view upcoming campaigns before they appear in the press.

....

Comments from visitors to the site will be used to shape the final design and a selection of views will be posted online.

....

It is estimated that over half of gay men in London have an internet profile, and GMFA plan more internet innovations later this year with the launch of a new interactive health promotion campaign.

AIDS was first noticed in 1981. By April of 1984, scientists in France and America announced they had discovered the virus likely to cause AIDS. But Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, M.D. would not be allowed to publish the eight-page safe sex educational brochure, "Understanding AIDS," and mail it to every household in America until 1988. This delay was premeditated and forced by anti-gay Christian advisors to President Ronald Reagan who did not want their "straight" children taught about a sexual disease that they believed was God's wrath against homosexual sinners. Many of these same Christian-Republican moralists are still power brokers in the current Republican Party and Bush administration.

The negligence of the Reagan administration also delayed independent responses to the AIDS crisis by dedicated health professionals. Doctors close to the AIDS crisis knew by 1983 that gay men who had anal sex without a condom had a high risk of getting AIDS. But sexual prudishness caused such information to be censored and not widely disseminated. For example, the idea of using condoms for safe sex would not hit the front page of The Barometer until fall of 1987.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants new rules for HIV testing that could increase the number of people tested for the disease but would also eliminate established safeguards.

Under the new guidelines, patients could get tested without their written consent. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the proposed new rules, health care providers could also do away with counseling should a patient test positive for HIV.

"The CDC should be commended for trying to increase the number of people tested for HIV, but eliminating the only safeguards that guarantee that testing is voluntary and informed does little to ensure that people will receive the care they need," Rose Saxe, staff attorney with the ACLU's AIDS Project, said in a statement. "Studies have shown that patients who are tested without consent are less likely to get the follow-up care that is critical to maintaining good health. Receiving an HIV diagnosis is a significant life-changing event. Without pre- and posttest counseling requirements, we risk losing a critical opportunity to educate people about HIV and how to prevent the spread of it."

Lambda Legal, the gay and lesbian legal advocacy group, also came out publicly against the proposed rules.

Britain’s sexual health education is renowned for being poor with many gay teens lacking even a very basic knowledge about sexually transmitted infections.

Gay teen website Puffta.co.uk offers sexual advice and undertakes an annual survey to understand the sexual habits of gay teens.

Astonishingly, it is the ONLY gay teen website in the UK to do this.