SAFER SEX blog

Link: HIV positive man held orgies ‘to infect others’ | The Courier-Mail

March 20, 2007 11:37am

AN HIV-positive Melbourne man organised orgies to deliberately infect other men with the virus, a court was told today.

Michael John Neal, 48, of suburban Coburg, faces 122 charges relating to sex with 16 men when he was knowingly infected with the HIV virus between 2000 and 2006.

He is accused of infecting two people with HIV over this period.

He appeared at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court for a committal hearing today.

Prosecutor Mark Rochford told the court Mr Neal’s reasons for infecting other men with HIV was to increase the number of men he could have unprotected sex with.

“In conversations and other material Mr Neal has demonstrated an intention to infect people with HIV,” Mr Rochford said.

“He indicated his reasons for doing that is for more people (to be) introduced to a particular group of HIV-infected persons actively participating in unprotected … sex.”

Mr Rochford told the court Mr Neal organised sex parties and orgies, which were called “conversion parties”, to thus facilitate the infection of people with HIV.

He said some people attending the parties were aware of this and others were not.

When interviewed by police, Mr Neal denied deliberately infecting people with HIV and said that he had a document from a doctor saying the chances of him infecting others was very low.

The committal hearing before magistrate Peter Reardon continues.

Link: Half of HIV transmitters unaware, survey says

CanWest News Service; Montreal Gazette
Published: Saturday, March 17, 2007

MONTREAL - Half of new HIV transmissions happen when newly infected people don’t know they are carrying the virus and don’t even test positive for it, a new study shows.

The study, presented Friday at an AIDS symposium in Montreal, provoked questions on how to deal with the problem of treating unknown sources of infection - including mass screening and using antiretroviral therapy for prevention.

“People are most likely to transmit the AIDS virus when they are first infected than in the chronic stages of the illness,” co-researcher Michel Roger of the Universite de Montreal said.

A team led by Dr. Mark Wainberg, director of the McGill AIDS Centre, followed 2,500 HIV patients in several Montreal clinics over eight years.

An estimated 30 per cent of people with HIV don’t know they are infected, which makes it important but difficult to identify them, Wainberg said.

The study, to be published in the April edition of the Journal of Infectious Disease, is among the first to quantify how newly infected people spread the virus to others.

Roger described HIV-positive people who are unaware of their status as “walking transmission bombs.”

Almost 40 million people worldwide - nearly 60,000 in Canada - are infected with HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. The virus multiplies quickly, starting immediately after infection.

Link: GayCityNews - Why Are So Many Mid-Life Gay Men Getting HIV?

By: SPENCER COX AND BRUCE KELLERHOUSE, PH.D.
03/15/2007

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?

We believe that one common thread runs through most of these men’s life histories - they came out and/or lived during the death-saturated culture of the 1980s and early to mid-1990s.

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.

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Link: Macleans.ca | New book draws fire for claiming that sex ‘hookups’ can damage young women

March 9, 2007 - 18:12
JOCELYN NOVECK

NEW YORK (AP) - During a class discussion on adolescence, a high school teacher recently asked her students whether they go on dates. We don’t “date,” the 12th graders reported. We “hook up.”

If you’re in your 40s, “hooking up” might mean catching a friend downtown for lunch. But to people in their teens or 20s, the phrase often means a casual sexual encounter - anything from kissing onwards - with no strings attached.

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Link: American Women: Less Sleep Means More Stress Means Less Sex - Science News - Playfuls.com - Science & Technology

05:37 PM, March 7th 2007
by Moni Constantinescu

The National Sleep Foundation has found that 60% of American women get insufficient sleep and thus suffer serious consequences.

As many as 60 per cent of American women seldom get a good night’s sleep while 67 per cent say they frequently have a sleep problem. The lack of sleep affects them in more ways than one, as stress levels rise, sex sounds exhausting and their schedule leaves little time for friends.

According to the survey released on Tuesday and titled Sleep in America, women are more likely to experience sleep problems than men. Some 1,003 women between the ages of 18-64 participated in the NFS poll.

72 % of working mothers and 68 % of single working women are more likely to experience symptoms of sleep problems like insomnia. The situation is more severe for stay-at-home mothers, that complain of ineffective sleep and of frequently waking up to comfort their baby or child.

As many as eighty percent of women reported that they continue their activities even if they feel sleepy during the day. 65% will probably use caffeinated beverages - 37% of all women consume three or more caffeinated beverages per day.

Bedtime comes no earlier, as 87% say they watch television, 60% do household chores, 37% spend time with children, 36% do activities with other family, 36% are on the Internet and 21% do work related to their job at least a few nights a week.

Psychological effects? Over-worrying (80%), being stressed, being anxious (79%). 55% of the female participants reported feeling unhappy, sad or depressed in the past month, while 36% reported that they recently felt hopeless about the future.

“Women of all ages are burning the candle at both ends and as a result they are sleepless and stressed out,” said Richard L. Gelula, NSF’s chief executive officer.

While most of the women will sacrifice sleep, exercise, time spent with family and friends, eating healthy and sexual activities with their partner, if pressed for time, they would not give less time to their work…

Women tend to compromise the most important aspects of good health — diet, exercise and sleep - when trying to juggle the day’s ongoing responsibilities. Foregoing healthy lifestyle habits in favor of more time during the day is not the solution. In fact, it can be detrimental to optimum health and performance.” said Kathryn Lee, Ph.D, a member of the NSF poll task force.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends avoiding caffeine in drinks and any alcohol a few hours before bedtime to improve sleep and finishing any exercise or workouts at least three hours before going to sleep.