The Denver Principles Project

Way back in 1983 Hiv+ people in Denver got together and created a kind of Declaration of Independence for Hiv+'ers - The Denver Principles.

At that time all over the world Hiv+ people were getting their second wind and starting to challenge their medical and political status.

The Denver Principles Project is an attempt to blow life into that particular flame at a time in America where hope seems to be tempering the economic crisis in the shape of Barack Obama.

Here's the link to the original - 

http://www.napwa.org/denverprinciplesproject/denver-principles.shtml

- and because its (unfortunately) just as relevant today as 25 years ago here's the full version.

The Denver Principles Statement from the Advisory Committee of People with AIDS (1983) We condemn attempts to label us as 'victims,' a term which implies defeat, and we are only occasionally 'patients,' a term which implies passivity, helplessness, and dependence upon the care of others. We are 'People With AIDS.' RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS 1. Come out, especially to their patients who have AIDS. 2. Always clearly identify and discuss the theory they favor as to the cause of AIDS, since this bias affects the treatments and advice they give.  3. Get in touch with their feelings (e.g., fears, anxieties, hopes, etc.) About AIDS and not simply deal with AIDS intellectually.  4. Take a thorough personal inventory and identify and examine their own agendas around AIDS.  5. Treat people with AIDS as a whole people, and address psychological issues as well as biophysical ones.  6. Address the question of sexuality in people with AIDS specifically, sensitively and with information about gay male sexuality in general, and the sexuality of people with AIDS in particular. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ALL PEOPLE  1. Support & Membership in our struggle against those who would fire us from our jobs, evict us from our homes, refuse to touch us or separate us from our loved ones, our community or our peers, since available evidence does not support the view that AIDS can be spread by casual, social contact.  2. Not scapegoat people with AIDS, blame us for the epidemic or generalize about our lifestyles. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH AIDS  1. Form caucuses to choose their own representatives, to deal with the media, to choose their own agenda and to plan their own strategies.  2. Be involved at every level of decision-making and specifically serve on the board of directors of provider organizations.  3. Be included in all AIDS forums with equal credibility as other participants, to share their own experiences and knowledge.  4. Substitute low-risk sexual behaviors for those which could endanger themselves or their partners; we feel that people with AIDS have an ethical responsibility to inform their potential partners of their health status. RIGHTS OF PEOPLE WITH AIDS  1. To live as full and satisfying sexual and emotional lives as anyone else.  2. To receive quality medical treatment and quality social service provision without discrimination of any form, including sexual orientation, gender, diagnosis, economic status or race.  3. To obtain full explanations of all medical procedures and risks, to choose or refuse their treatment modalities, to refuse to participate in research without jeopardizing their treatment and to make informed decisions about their lives.  4. To ensure privacy and confidentiality of medical records, to receive human respect and the right to choose who their significant others are.  5. To die--and to LIVE--in dignity.

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 ? .......

Necessary Danger

It's perhaps sad but it's true: we cannot be trained not to do things because they are unsafe. 

We smoke, we drink, we eat wrong, we drive faster than we should, we leap from airplanes, we bungee-jump, we skateboard, we have sex. 

It isn't that we must do these things, it's just that they must be done.

In our world, safety cannot be mandated, particularly where the passions at the heart of our identities are concerned. 

We believe in miracles. We are optimistic and irrational. We believe that we can be saved if we will just be ourselves. We smoke, drink, fuck and play because this is what we are and this is what we do. 

It is this depth, this complexity and this eloquent and tragic irrationality that porn has the responsibility to represent and represent accurately and honestly. That is its job. 

An avoidance of unsafeness doesn't work as an anti-AlDS strategy, and it has been bastardized by the slicker elements of porn in ways that have only exacerbated the problem, promoting not a culture of sex and sexuality, but a perfectly tantalizing world of vapid heat and "sexiness".

Paul Morris

1998

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

New Year's Reception

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Its the Aids Industry's annual New Year's Reception this evening and unfortunately I'm still too ill to make an appearance. Broad spectrum anti-biotics and alcohol don't make a good cocktail anyway.

Its a shame really.

I mean, all these institutions, companies, funds etc get all this subsidy all year round and the only real chance to get any of this back as a gay poz man is to drink as much free booze as possible during the New Year's reception.
After all, we aren't going to see much of it the rest of the year ....

However, I will miss doing what I always do, sitting on the sidelines watching and listening;

Checking the guy who wanted it but didn't get it hating the guy who did.

Waiting for the moment when some guy throws back one too many and lets rip into his nearest enemy.

Keeping my eyes on 'Mr Embarrasing Moment Waiting to Happen'.

Mr ex-chairman brown-nose leaving a trail of stickiness as he oozes around the room.

Clocking the asshole who always seems to over estimate himself by trying to climb the ladder a couple of rungs and at the same time get his fuck arranged for the evening.

Bitchin' 'bout the bitch that did the bitchin'.


However, it seems that I won't be the only one not there this evening.

Not that anyone there will notice. Not that anyone there will see the importance of it. Not that anyone will really see that many good people will not be there because they won't play anymore.

They'll never know until its too late.

Too caught up in their own lives, saving their own skins, jobs, status.

This is the year when they find out that its too late ....
.

now THAT'S what I call a fundraiser

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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
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People with AIDS Buried Alive in Papua New Guinea

AIDS in Papua New Guinea

"Margaret Marabe, who works for a volunteer organisation called Igat Hope, Pidgin English for I've Got Hope, spent five months carrying out an AIDS awareness campaign in the remote Southern Highlands of the South Pacific nation.

She said she had seen five people buried alive. One was calling out 'Mama, Mama' as the soil was shovelled over his head, said Ms Marabe,'One of them was my cousin, who was buried alive,' she said. 'I said, 'Why are they doing that?' And they said, 'If we let them live, stay in the same house, eat together and use or share utensils, we will contract the disease and we too might die'.

' Villagers had told her it was common for people to bury AIDS victims alive."

source: Towleroad

WHO warns of global epidemic risk

In a report, A Safer Future, the WHO says new diseases are emerging at the "historically unprecedented" rate of one per year.

Since the 1970s, 39 new diseases have developed, and in the last five years alone, the WHO has identified more than 1,100 epidemics including cholera, polio and bird flu.

"It would be extremely naive and complacent to assume that there will not be another disease like Aids, another Ebola, or another Sars, sooner or later," the report says.

Infectious diseases emerging at a rate of one or more a year since the 1970s :-
These include bird flu, Sars, also Ebola, Marburg and Nipah viruses
Flu pandemic could affect more than 1.5 billion people or 25% of world population
Comeback by cholera, yellow fever and epidemic meningococcal disease in the last quarter of the 20th Century
685 verified events of international public health concern from September 2003 to September 2006
Growth of anti-microbial resistance, notably drug-resistant TB