"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Gays and AIDS

by Lee

AIDS is an equally opportunity killer, remember?

The number of gay and bisexual men diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, climbed for the third consecutive year in the United States in 2002, fueling fears that the disease might be poised for a major comeback in this high-risk group.

THE CENTERS FOR Disease Control and Prevention, which reported the finding on Monday at the 2003 National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta, also revealed that AIDS diagnoses overall had risen 2.2 percent to 42,136 last year.

“The AIDS epidemic in the United States is far from over,” said Dr. Harold Jaffe, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention.

An estimated 850,000 to 950,000 Americans have the AIDS virus. AIDS killed 16,371 people across the nation last year, about 6 percent fewer than in 2001, according to the CDC.

Although U.S. health officials have been preaching HIV prevention to all Americans, they have become particularly concerned in recent years by an apparent resurgence of infections among gay and bisexual males.

HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men surged 7.1 percent last year, according to data collected by the CDC from 25 states that have long-standing HIV reporting. New diagnoses in this high-risk group have increased 17.7 percent since 1999, while remaining stable in other vulnerable communities.

Jaffe cautioned, however, that the jump in HIV diagnoses could have been caused by increases in the number of gay and bisexual males being tested for the virus and was not proof that this group was being infected at a faster rate.

This is a story that I have covered before.  (See here and here.) Look, this is not difficult to understand.  Men are promiscuous.  If there were clubs where men could go and have anonymous sex with gorgeous women they would be packed every night of the week.  In gay areas these men have that opportunity, but with other men.  The gay aspect has nothing to do with it, the issue is promiscuous masculinity.  But the PC message that AIDS is equally dangerous for gays and straights is ridiculous.  HIV spreads through groups of people who engage in certain behaviors, and the sooner that we take note of this basic fact the better off society as a whole will be.

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