Next?

A person goes to the GGD, or the local doctor for the Hiv test.

Or they end up in the emergency ward of the local hospital and end up giving permission for a Hiv test.

Or any number of scenarios.

And the result comes back within 45 minutes, a week, 3 weeks, as positive.

What's next?

I think most people will be surprised to hear that the answer to that question is:

Nothing.

Or at least very little.

Ideal scenario:-

Person gets referred to a hospital in Amsterdam by their friendly local doctor. Person ends up in the capable hands of one of our wonderful nursing specialists. CD4 levels, viral loads etc are all discussed, treatment methods suggested, next appointment made.

What's next?

Well, nothing really.

Or, once again, very little.

Anything that happens next will have to be on own initiative.

Hopefully said person will find other Hiv+'ers, especially if he/she is Gay but they will take sometime to find.

In the meantime, all the feelings of remorse, pain, grief, fear, loss etc. will have to be worked through on their own or with partner(s), friends etc.

I don't think it should be like this.

Do you?

Exhaust pipe needles

Dear reader, you of all people know that the last thing I wanted was to be rushed into hospital again, for whatever reason. But there I was again last week in the emergency ward of the OLVG, and don't tell anyone, but in my usual bed too. At least I was in a new ward afterwards, although Neurology is one of those departments that always sounded very vague, and nothing has happened to change my mind on that one.

I'm a fan of the OLVG as everyone knows but not a fan of some of the specialists and/or doctors. God help me, the female ones.

I don't know why it works like that but it does. 

The man in the bed next door to me was recovering from a craniotomy, that's skull surgery to you and me, and had a wound over half his head held together with stitches that would not have been out of place on Frankensteins monster. The doctor decided that he needed a lumbar puncture there and then, in bed, in a full ward. Now the man was obviously not completely 100% in our world and the insertion of what is laughingly referred to as the 'needle' didn't go as planned. Three times. 'Needle' my arse, its a fucking piece of steel as big as an exhaust pipe that they try to insert into your back without painkillers.

He of course screamed the place down, I had to leave the ward, there's just so much pain and suffering I can listen to. But not before I had heard the doctor reprimanding the patient that he wasn't being very helpful by responding in that way, and that if he didn't co-operate it would only take longer because she was determined that it would happen today.

This is the best hospital in the Netherlands. Still, doctors, specialists, surgeons treat patients like small petulant children.

Not all. Dear lord, no. There are wonderful people in the OLVG.

I'm just saying, once again, that although the powers that be try to represent our Health Care System as having no problems whatsoever, its not true.

In particular an Aids Machine that denies that patient care for Hiv+'ers falls short.

So long a hiv+'er stays within his or her own department (usually Internal Medicine) then they are usually treated with the utmost care by doctors, specialists and nurses who are worth their weight in gold. But if they stray to another department for whatever reason there are no guarantees.

On the Neurology ward I kept my Hiv Meds on the bedside trolley so that I could get at them easily. Visible to all. I don't see that as a problem, the only people who would know what they were, were other hiv+'ers and doctors. No big deal.

Yet nurses still referred to them in whispered tones as 'your other medication', and remembering to take them was my own responsibility, not theirs, that was made clear very early on.

Health.

Its a subjective opinion.

To me its one thing, to you another.

But to a health care professional it means a completely different thing.

Finding the median between the two (three) is something we all need to work on.

But do we all want to?

Normal

I don't know about you, but I get the feeling that the hiv+ emancipation wave has petered out and died.

Don't get me wrong. There are lots of men out there working hard for all kinds of rights and against all kinds of rules.

But emancipation?

We've settled back into being 'normal' again.

Being 'normal' is the natural dutch state of being. 

Being 'normal' is not being out of the ordinary, is being like everyone else, being the same.

Being 'normal' is also not being troublesome, not making a fuss, not being a pain in the ass.

Take a look at the Hiv Vereniging, 'normality' taken to extremes.

Washed, bleached, and sanitized. The douche has been in their ass for years making sure there is no awkward shit floating around inside.

But being 'normal' also indicates stagnation, and with stagnation comes decay, rotting, and ultimately an inevitable, albeit painless, death.

'Normality' - the Dutch disease

Denial

Are Hiv+ Gay Men really ill?

I know it sounds contentious, but honestly, do we look ill? sound ill? act ill?

Well, no. Or at least no-one sees us when we are. And when asked, we will sometimes acknowledge the fact but will almost always deny the results of being ill.

Its hardly surprising.

Chronically ill people can choose to accept or deny their chronic illness. 

Even though for a short while being 'Poz' may have had its heyday as 'trendy', being chronically ill does not fit into the traditional lifestyle of a Gay Man. 

Denial is in fact the only way out for many Hiv+ Gay Men.

Not denial of being hiv+, nor of the disease itself, but of being 'ill' because of it.

As a sub-sub-sub-culture, we have developed this extraordinary schizophrenic atitude towards our own 'Poz'ness'.

On the one hand we are chronically ill and in need of a constant supply of high end highly toxic expensive designer drugs to keep us alive, and on the other hand its 'life as usual'.

Not withstanding the Dutch tendency to minimise emotion, I find it incredible how our mind's self-defense mechanism kicks in when confronted with something of the magnitude of 'life threatening disease'. 

What does the mind use to avoid overload, you've guessed it, denial.

Its amazing to me how the media manages to present us as victim and perpetrator. What's even more amazing is the Aids machine in the Netherlands that manages to do exactly the same. But with one exception, the emphasis of the 'Prevention lobby' is on perpetrator and not victim.

We, as Hiv+ Gay men need to see ourselves as neither. 

We are not, always, sometimes, never have been patients, clients, victims, perps, murderers, crazies, junkies, drug abusers, sex addicts, pathetic, needy, healthy, hypochondriacs ....

We need to create our own image.

We need to stop the denial.

Optimism

No, I refuse to be optimistic about hiv and/or aids.

And no, that doesn't mean I have to be cynical either.

Realistic.

In New York, the third leading cause of death in men under the age of 65 is still aids.

People with hiv climb mountains, swim rivers, dance the tango .... and die.

Don't be silly. Honestly, who still dies from AIDS?

And no, I don't mean all the little brown babies in Africa.

In a world where people are still dying of opportunistic diseases as a result of suppressed immune systems I see no reason to lie.

I mean all the Western European Gay men whose HAART medication fails to handle the virus, whose liver gets eaten away by cancer because they are more at risk than non-hiv'ers, whose lungs rot because they smoke/have smoked and are 3 times more at risk of acquiring lung cancer.

Men who have never been tested and now see themselves as too old to catch hiv, die because the medication comes too late. Because they only find out they are infected when they wake up in the Emergency Room of their local hospital.

Men who have religiously taken their medication for 10 years or more and now die of rectal cancer, lung cancer, heart disease, stomach cancer, lymphoma's, liver and kidney failure etc. All or none of which may or may not be related to the hiv virus and/or medication against it.

Men who were infected with a hiv strain that is resistant to known drugs, who live day by day until the next new aids drug comes on the market. Brave men who sometimes just can't hold on long enough.

Men who lose faith in medicine, who turn to non-western doctors for a gentler way of surviving, who are tired of medication, tired of fighting.

No,

Being a Gay man with hiv is not something to be optimistic about.

I can live till I'm 90, but I will probably still have the problems to face that I face every day.

Chronic tiredness, swollen glands, diarrhea, opportunistic infections.

The anxiety of discovering a bruise, a mark, a sore, a pain, an ache. What is it? Its nothing. Its everything. Its nothing.

Optimism is a word we use to ignore hiv and aids.

Optimism makes it all go away.

It won't go away.

reference: New York Times Magazine

a vision of hell without fear

Now what I'm about to say may never reach the general media,

Religions and Dogmas all over the world will try to silence this news,

Institutions that exist solely to feed off Aids subsidy will try to bury this,

.... so listen very carefully for I will say this only once .....

"HIV-positive patients with an undetectable viral load infrequently change their anti-HIV treatment because of side-effects nowadays, according to the results of a British study published in the May 31^st edition of AIDS."

source: aidsmap 

With the latest wave of hiv designer drugs showing their true worth in delivering effective results with almost zero intolerance in terms of side effects, and a new compound found that could lead to another new design of drugs, then the long term goal of truly 'liveable' medication could become reality.

No longer the 'poison' that we all view our medication as. No longer the idea that the pills can only stop the virus by damaging our bodies. No longer having to live damaged lives.

But ....

Not everyone is going to want the world to hear this.

Hiv infection without death, without pain? without even discomfort? 

How will the Church cope with a potential sinner without the promise of hell?

How will a Government cope with gay sex without consequences?

How will all those Institutions survive that only survive because of subsidy, if there is nothing for them to do?

 

.... and who will pay for it all ? .......

Hard Rock Cafe Amsterdam

Until very recently indeed, the Hard Rock Cafe in Amsterdam was one of the few employers here who openly hired Gay men who were Hiv+. Gay+'ers could be assured of sympathetic employers and colleagues, flexible working times, openness and honesty.

However, the Hard Rock Cafe (at least in Amsterdam) seems to be conducting a 'purge' of Hiv+'ers in a vicious and heartless way.

People report being pushed around to get them to leave of their own volition, or being tricked into getting their contracts ended without hope of disability pay.

Threatening phone calls, mails, letters - the usual corporate stuff.

Shame.

Ghost Writers

Drug companies have once again fallen foul of their own greed.

Merck, the company that makes amongst other things the new Hiv-1 Integrase Inhibitor, Isentress (Raltegravir), has been under scrutiny by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

It seems to be a regular occurence that Research Studies be written, not by researchers, but ghost-written by the Drug Companies themselves and signed much later by an appropriate Academic Researcher.

The implication in the article from the JAMA is that this practice is widespread within the Pharmaceutical community.

So how much of this research is done by independant researchers?

How safe are the drugs?

Source: New York Times

Vaccine Failure

20 years, 4 continents, 9801 volunteers, and 561 million dollars later we are no nearer to a Hiv vaccine. 

We knew this, but what we didn't know until a few days ago was that those volunteers were not only not protected from being infected but were also at a higher risk of being infected than the placebo group. About two times as high.

The two field tests set up by the National Institutes of Health were cut short after the risks to the volunteers and the futility of going on became obvious to all involved.

"This is on the same level of catastrophe as the Challenger disaster" that destroyed a NASA space shuttle, said Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, and head of the Institute for Human Virology in Baltimore.

"None of the products currently in the pipeline has any reasonable chance of being effective in field trials," Ronald C. Desrosiers, a molecular geneticist at Harvard University, declared last month at an AIDS conference "We simply do not know at the present time how to design a vaccine that will be effective against HIV.

Don't even think about what all that money could have done to help sufferers all over the world.

source: Washington Post

Hiv = Big Money

Hiv treatment is turning into a big profit centre for the pharmaceutical industry. What seemed like a few years ago a profit killer is now rapidly turning into a profit maker.

Failure to develop a vaccine, steadily climbing infection rates, the medical profession advising earlier use of treatment, patients living much longer and the new generation of once a day pills is increasing the potential client base for hiv medication exponentially. 

For example; Gilead Sciences Inc. who developed and produce Truvada, and are responsible for the new standard introduction medication in the States, Atripla. Their hiv product sales increased 30% from 2005 to 2006, and then 48% 2006 to 2007, making their market worth $42 billion making it the third largest biotechnology company in the world.

Atripla is now the most prescribed treatment for patients starting therapy in the U.S. and is expected to bring in sales above $1 billion this year alone.

source: LA Times

Checkpoint

Dear Checkpoint Clients,

For some of you it is already a while ago, for others it was very recently that you visited our hiv testing facility.

We would like to inform you that Checkpoint is going to close its doors from June 21st 2008. This is due to the fact that Checkpoint has reached its most important goal: acceptance and implementation of the hiv rapid test as screening method. We do realise that not all GGD’s are using the rapid test, but it’s up to the GGD Netherlands and the GGD’s that are using the rapid test to convince their colleagues. Through the link Andere sneltestlocaties in Nederland (Other rapid test facilities in the Netherlands) you can check if the GGD in your surroundings uses the rapid hiv test.

Until Friday June 20th 2008 we are still running our clinic. Appointments can still be made through the Servicepunt (020-689 25 77) on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays between 2 and 6 pm.

With this email we would like to thank all of you for the trust you gave us during the past 6 years.
Checkpoint

.... and with that e-mail the last 'truly' gay friendly (although not exclusive) place to get tested for hiv has been lost. To the wonderful people who have kept this going for 6 years, and especially Stan and William - the community owes you all a great deal.

Its so bizarre that at a point when the Gay male community is screaming out for specific help and support that all the services that were (as few as were/are) are disappearing. As the gap between the Aids Industry and the community widens then no-one should be surprised when things go seriously wrong. How can the Industry blame the hiv+ Gay Male community for spreading the virus when the doors to testing, support, understanding are slammed shut in our faces.

Why should any Gay Male make the effort to stand in line outside of the STD clinic at 6 'o clock in the morning, cheek and jowl with the great unwashed of this city, in order to get tested for hiv if he feels healthy?

For that matter, why would he do that for anything? He might do it for Madonna tickets at a push. Lets get real here ....

A Gay Male is not going to get tested for anything if he has no obvious long-term symptoms. The more difficult testing is made, the more STD's in all shapes and sizes will become epidemic.

Its not just about funding. Its about changing attitude. The Dutch are paranoid about being seen as 'discriminatory' alothough that is changing very slowly. But it means that anything specifically targeted at one group is seen as discriminatory, whether it is positive or not. As Gay Men we are not actually allowed to discriminate against ourselves by wanting 'special' treatment. We 'should' want to be treated just like everyone else, all support, treatment, help etc 'should' be open to all indiscriminately. This is ingrained in the Dutch culture and will take a long time to change, if ever.

Dutch 'liberalism' is tolerance not acceptance.

.

the Good News and the Bad News

.


the Good News

The land of chocolate, cow bells, and nazi bank accounts has proven what we've all suspected for a while now - a non-detetectable viral load gives a (clinically) negligible chance of transfer. Very simply said; if you take your meds then the chance that you can infect anyone else is technically zero.

The Americans et al are up in arms about this of course. Our status just moved from 'potential murderers' to 'nice people who take pills'.


the Bad News

The Liberal Netherlands moves one step further away from utopia.

The Nederlandse Algemene Wet Bijzondere Ziektekosten or AWBZ as it is called is a general law (or group of rules) organising insurance payment for so called 'special illnesses'. In Dutch Law these 'special illnesses' are termed as such when there is no cure, if there is treatment to halt or reduce the spread of the illness, experimental treatments etc. Nursing homes, hospices etc also fall under this law.

As hiv+ers we are classified as chronically ill and all of our hiv related costs are paid for by this law.

However, yesterday the comittee for advice to the government on public health advised them to remove the AWBZ and hand it over to the commercial health insurance companies. Saying that "they are better equipped to deal with these cases more efficiently and with higher quality". They also added that the cost of the AWBZ for the government is exhorbitant.

What does this mean?

The most vulnerable people in this country, the terminally ill, the chronically ill, the dying, the diseased without hope, the disabled without future - their well-being will be decided upon by commercial insurance companies.

That is, if they can pay for it .... can you?
.

see AidsMap

Biohazard

.


Leo reminded me yesterday about the re-clamation of the biohazard symbol.

It has always been an agressively defiant yet almost secret symbol in the Gay community. Many Gay Poz Men have it tattoed somewhere on their bodies, in sizes ranging from postage stamp to football size (there will always be size queens).
Its a Tribal symbol 'I am one of the group', its a warning 'I am hiv positive', and its an invitation 'I'm like you'.

The 'real' symbol is a warning against toxic waste, contamination.

As we have always done before, we take the symbol of discrimination and reclaim it for our own.

The world still sees us as toxic, poisonous, dangerous.
The world still sees us as the disease itself and not the victims.
Then we are hiv.

No.
There are so many of us now.
The biohazard symbol is ours to use as a group.
The red ribbon has little or no meaning for us on a personal level any more. It has been taken out of our hands and used and abused by politics, religion and corporate business alike.

I'll wear the biohazard symbol.
.

Immune Deficiency

.


Hiv+'ers have become to the bacterial, viral, infection world what the butterfly is to the environmental world. Lots of pollution means little or no butterflies. Lots of bacteria, virusses and general nasty diseases means lots of very ill Hiv+'ers.

We have little or no defense of our own against most common or garden virusses. Everyone of us on hiv medication is in actuality constantly in chemotherapy. Add to that all the stuff that depresses the immune system of even healthy people, like depression etc and its hardly surprising that it sometimes seems as though we are dropping like flies.

Anything weird, wonderful, and exotic that hasn't been seen in centuries, type disease we seem to get. Have we turned into disease sponges? Has this stuff been around for years and years waiting for humans to drop their guard physically? I'm knocking on wood as i write this, but I'm not going to be surprised when the first cases of Bubonic Plague show up.

Lets not forget also the run of the mill epidemic/pandemic scares like Avian Flu, TBC en MRSA.

MRSA is of course nothing new. Its been the great fear of all health institutions for quite a few years now. Why? Well, first and foremost financially. Closing down wards and putting wings into quarantine is not good for the budget.
Oh yes, and people die of it too.
But thankfully for the hospitals its only people with poor immune systems like old people and hiv +'ers.
My old House Doctor always told me to use all means and measures possible to avoid going to hospital. Because, as he put it, "If you want to go down with something really nasty then stay away from the place where they put all the people with really nasty stuff together".

One (if not the) reason that implementation of vaccine programmes against, for example, HPV is that the only people in real danger of getting anal cancer from it are people with a poor immune system who allow other people to put penisses into their anal cavities.

I try not be cynical about this sort of thing but its hard not to be.
In a lot of cases a lot of pain and hardship could be relieved or avoided completely if Gay Poz men were seen as a valid group of patients. Which is of course what patient support organisations are for. Care and support for the own patient group, and lobbying within the establishment for (amongst other things) adequate representation. Unfortunately most patient support organisations aren't willing to bite the hand that feeds it. Especially in the Netherlands where funding is to a large degree directly and/or directly from the government. The world has long envied us for having government funding for Aids and Hiv but there are great problems, opportunities for mis-use, etc. inherent in the system, but that's stuff for another article.

Gay Poz men want to be seen as 'normal' people. But we aren't and can never be until we stop being patients. We are, by definition of the condition we have, people with little or no defenses of our own against the world around us.

The current MRSA scare in the States is pre-presidential campagne propaganda, but is symptomatic of how we as Gay Poz men are perceived; the perpetrators of medical evil and the origins of all things epidemic.

No. We are the victims not the perpetrators.

Saying that we are victims is going to get me angry responses from the brethren I know, but it doesn't work any other way. The longer we tell each other that a couple of pills a day means that we can live life like 'normal' people then the longer we live our lives with our heads in the sand.

As people we don't want to be 'deficient', and as Gay men we would rather be 'absolutely flawless'. As Gay Poz men we can't be perfect, so we try to be Poz Perfect. How many times have you seen on a dating site "Hiv+ but healthy". Don't get me wrong, I applaud anyone who has the guts to be on a dating site and openly disclose their status there.
But what is being said here?

"I'm hiv+ but I can function in society as if I wasn't",
"I'm hiv+ but I don't look like I am",
"I'm hiv+ but no-one would ever know if I didn't tell them",
"I'm hiv+ but that doesn't mean I'm ugly",
"I'm hiv+ but that doesn't mean I'm not hot and gorgeous and fuckable",
"I'm hiv+ but don't worry there's no drama involved"?

So how subjective is health?
.

now THAT'S what I call a fundraiser

.



World of Chocolate is the AIDS Foundation of Chicago’s (AFC) annual holiday fundraising event held in commemoration of World AIDS Day.


At this festive event, guests will sample scrumptious chocolate creations from many of Chicagoland’s finest restaurants, caterers and chocolatiers.The vendors creating the delicacies will compete for top honors in several categories as judged by local celebrities. Other components of the evening include entertainment, a raffle, and shopping at the Holiday Bazaar which features fine gifts and ornaments donated by local merchants.

DATE & TIME: Thursday, November 29, 2007
5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
LOCATION: Hilton Chicago, 720 South Michigan Avenue
.

Wij zijn niet alleen!

Blijf volhouden Poz & Proud broeders! Wij zijn niet de enige die proberen gezondheids instanties naar ons te laten luisteren.

Aan de ander kant van de Plas zijn groepen die hetzelfde proberen te bewerkstelligen als ons:

Een samenwerkingsverband tussen de gemeente en homomannen (met Hiv) om oplossingen te vinden voor de fysieke en psychische problemen uniek voor de homogemeenschap en hiv+'ers in het bijzonder.


"Creating a Community Strategy to Address the Health Concerns of Gay Men & MSM in NYC "
When: October 22 & 23, 2007
Time: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Where: The LGBT Center208 West 13th Street
This two day event is an opportunity for the community to collaborate with the NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.

Together we will set the agenda and find solutions to the health concerns of Gay Men & MSM in NYC.

Heeft iemand AirMiles over? ....

source: LifeLube

.

Duuh

"Are you afraid of dying?"
"Only partly"
"Which part?"
"The part that hurts"



But it seems we, as hiv infected, won't be around to worry about that when it happens - we'll all be ga-ga long before then.

"HIV's double hit on brain cells"
"HIV can trigger learning and memory deficits by launching a double attack on the brain, research shows.
It was already known that a protein on the surface of the virus could kill off mature brain cells.
But the latest study shows it also prevents the production of replacements by crippling cells with the potential to step in and take their place." source BBC Health

We've given Hiv the blame for everything else. Now we can give it the blame for burning off our mature brain cells. Maybe a touch of immaturity, feigned or real might actually get us somewhere .....

.... imagine going to Den Haag and demanding free Viagra in the basic health package by sitting down in the office of the Health Minister, "oh and while you are at it mister security officer a cup of coffee would go down a treat .... oh and by the way I am on seriously high levels of psychotropic drugs which impair my judgement .... please forgive my drooling over your nice clean unform .... what was the name again? No, silly, not yours - mine"

"Duu-uuuh"

Rectal trauma and drug use key in sexual transmission of HCV

The factors involved in the sexual transmission of hepatitis C virus amongst HIV-positive gay men may be more complex than previously thought, according to German research presented to the recent 4th International AIDS Society Conference in Sydney.

Investigators from Bonn initially found, in common with several other recent studies, that unprotected anal intercourse was associated with a risk of hepatitis C. But in subsequent statistical analysis, only snorting drugs and rectal bleeding after sex were risk factors for infection with hepatitis C. The study’s researchers fear that hepatitis C prevention that focuses only on consistent condom use could be too narrow in its cope and overlook potentially more important risk behaviours.

Doctors from across Europe have been observing mini-epidemics of hepatitis C virus in HIV-positive gay men. Several studies have implicated unprotected anal sex as a significant risk factor for the sexual transmission of hepatitis C, with other research showing an association with fisting, drug use and some sexually transmitted infections.

Although few would seriously doubt that hepatitis C is being sexually transmitted between HIV-positive gay men, there is, nevertheless, very little evidence of sexual transmission of the virus in HIV-negative gay men, or in HIV-positive heterosexual couples. Although one study found that hepatitis C was more likely to be found in the semen of those with HIV, therefore explaining transmission of the virus via unprotected sex, some investigators believe that the factors involved in the sexual transmission of hepatitis C may be much more complex.

AidsMap

FDA Approves New HIV Med

Pfizer announced today that the FDA has approved its new HIV drug Selzentry (maraviroc).

The drug is the first of a new class of HIV drugs to be approved in ten years. Selzentry is intended for patients who have the HIV-1 strain of the virus and are already resistant to multiple HIV drugs.

Selzentry is the first in a class of drugs known as CCR5 antagonists, which block the CCR5 co-receptor, the virus' predominant entry route into T-cells. Selzentry stops the R5 virus on the outside surface of the cells before it enters, rather than fighting the virus inside as do all other classes of oral HIV medicines.

Selzentry will become available next month. Pfizer plans on marketing the drug as Celsentri outside the USA. "Cell sentry", get it? Selzentry must be taken twice a day, unlike many current HIV meds.

from Joe.My.God.

Safe(r) Sex?

How 'Safe' is 'Safe Sex'?

I've searched the Net for hard evidence on the safety of condoms and the use of condoms, but not even the 'holier than thou' Terence Higgins Trust dares to put a figure on it.

"Of all the ways you can lower the risks you take in your sex life using condoms is the most effective. Condoms have one of the highest success rates at stopping unwanted pregnancies and preventing many sexually transmitted infections, including HIV (the virus that can lead to AIDS)."

First of all, the fact that the THT even suggests that there are alternatives to condom use is something that in the Netherlands unthinkable is. A hint that risk reduction strategies could be as useful and/ or efficient as condom use is seen as almost criminal here.

The Netherlands is also the only nation left that talks about 'Safe Sex'. The rest of the world agrees that condom use is efficient but not 100% and can therefore never be called 'Safe', at the most 'Safer'.

The strange hypocrisy is of course that so called low risk activities such as dick sucking etc. are now regarded as somehow more acceptable. Or te be more precise, the risk is more acceptable. There are no figures for this, no documentation, no tests or research. How the hell we got the idea that some low risk activities were 'safe' and others 'not safe' is beyond me. A sort of trade off?

The only way to avoid transferring the virus van one person to the other is if both people have the virus already i.e. serosorting. Why on earth is this so unacceptable? Its a damn sight more effective than a condom at halting the spread of hiv.

Is it the fact that it implies that hiv infected people have sex? Should sick people have sex? Should the men in the invisible wheelchairs be celibate, or even sexless?

Maybe its there that the source of the discrimination lies. For discrimination it is however we try to rationalise it away.


Its okay to be hiv positive.

Its reasonably okay to be hiv positive and gay.

Its not okay to be hiv positive, gay and have sex with other men.