Bug chasers
Poop Dogg
were a bunch of degenerates who actively sought out HIV and deliberately
infected others with it. This article proves that I was right...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=17380
Bug Chasers
The men who long to be HIV+
Carlos nonchalantly asks whether his drink was made with whole or skim
milk. He takes a moment to slurp on his grande Caffe Mocha in a
crowded Starbucks, and then he gets back to explaining how much he
wants HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. His eyes light up as he says
that the actual moment of transmission, the instant he gets HIV, will
be "the most erotic thing I can imagine." He seems like a typical
thirty-two-year-old man, but, in fact, he has a secret life. Carlos is
chasing the bug.
"I know what the risks are, and I know that putting myself in this
situation is like putting a gun to my head," he says. Some of that
mountain music that's so popular is playing, making the moment even
more surreal as a Southern voice sings, "Keep on the sunny side of
life" behind Carlos. "But I think it turns the other guy on to know
that I'm negative and that they're bringing me into the brotherhood.
That gets me off, too."
I met Carlos in New York's Greenwich Village, the neighborhood where
he usually hangs out. He is tall, with a large build, and plenty of
gay men find him attractive. His longish, curly-wavy hair is jet-black
with golden highlights, and his face is soft and just a bit feminine.
He has a very appealing smile and laugh, and he's a funny guy
sometimes. The conversation veers from the banal -- his fascination
with the reality show The Amazing Race -- to his desire for HIV.
Carlos' tone never changes when switching from one topic to the other.
When asked whether he is prepared to live with HIV after that "erotic"
moment, Carlos dismisses living with HIV as a minor annoyance. Like
most bug chasers, he has the impression that the virus just isn't such
a big deal anymore: "It's like living with diabetes. You take a few
pills and get on with your life." Carlos spends the afternoon
continually calling a man named Richard, someone he met on the
Internet. They met on barebackcity.com about a year ago, while Carlos
was still with his boyfriend. That boyfriend left because Carlos was
having sex with other men and because he was interested in barebacking
-- the practice of having sex without a condom. Carlos and Richard are
arranging a "date" for later that day.
Carlos is part of an intricate underground world that has sprouted,
driven almost completely by the Internet, in which men who want to be
infected with HIV get together with those who are willing to infect
them. The men who want the virus are called "bug chasers," and the men
who freely give the virus to them are called "gift givers." While the
rest of the world fights the AIDS epidemic and most people fear HIV
infection, this subculture celebrates the virus and eroticizes it.
HIV-infected semen is treated like liquid gold. Carlos has been
chasing the bug for more than a year in a topsy-turvy world in which
every convention about HIV is turned upside down. The virus isn't
horrible and fearsome, it's beautiful and sexy -- and delivered in the
way that is most likely to result in infection. In this world, the men
with HIV are the most desired, and the bug chasers will do anything to
get the virus -- to "get knocked up," to be "bred" or "initiated into
the brotherhood."
Like a lot of sexual fetishes and extreme behaviors, bug chasing could
not exist without the Internet, or at least it couldn't thrive. Prior
to the advent of Web surfing and e-mail, it would have been
practically impossible for bug chasing to happen in any great numbers,
because it's still not acceptable to walk up to a stranger and say you
want the virus. But the Internet's anonymity and broad access make it
possible to find someone with like interests, no matter how
outlandish. Carlos surfs online about twenty hours a week looking for
men to have sex with, usually frequenting sites such as bareback.com
and barebackcity.com, plus a number of Internet discussion groups.
Most of the Web sites use the pretense that they actually are about
barebacking, which is in itself risky and controversial but still a
long way from bug chasing. For the Web sites, that distinction is at
best razor-thin and more often just an outright lie. "We got Poz4Poz,
Neg4Neg and bug chasers looking to join the club," the welcome page to
barebackcity.com, which claims 48,000 registered users, up from 28,000
about a year ago, recently said. "Be the first to seed a newbie and
give him a pozitive attitude!"
Within this online community, bug chasers revel in their desires,
using their own lingo about "poz" and "neg" men, "bug juice" and
"conversion" from negative to positive. User profiles include names
such as BugChaser21, Knockmeup, BugMeSoon, ConvertMeSir,
PozCum4NegHole and GiftGiver. The posters are upfront about seeking
HIV, even extremely enthusiastic, possibly because the Web sites are
about the only place a bug seeker can really express his desires
openly. Under turn-ons, a poster called PozMeChgo craves a "hot poz
load deep in me. I really want to be converted!! Breed me/seed me!"
Carlos' profile on one Web site lists his screen name as ConvertMe,
and he says he wants a man "to fill me up with that poison seed." His
AOL Instant Messenger name is Bug Juice Wanted.
It's not uncommon to see people post replies to the profiles
encouraging the men to seek HIV. One such comment reads, "This guy
knows what he wants!! I would love to plant my seeds :)) Come and join
the club. The more we are, the stronger we are." A Yahoo! spokeswoman
confirms that the company shuts down such sites when it receives
notice that the subscribers are promoting HIV infection or any other
kind of harm to one another, but the company doesn't go looking for
bug chasers in its thousands of discussion groups, most established by
subscribers themselves. Recently, it was easy to find two discussion
groups on Yahoo! that promoted bug chasing, one called barebackover50
and one called gayextremebareback. The first discussion group was
established in 1998 and had 1,439 members at the end of 2002. Yahoo!
closed the group after Rolling Stone inquired about it.
Condoms and safe sex are openly ridiculed on bug-chasing Web sites,
with many bug chasers rebelling against what they see as the dogma of
safe-sex education; constantly thinking about a deadly disease takes
all the fun out of sex, they say, and condoms suck. Carlos agrees and
says getting HIV will make safe sex a moot point. "It's about
freedom," he says. "What else can happen to us after this? You can
fuck whoever you want, fuck as much as you want, and nothing worse can
happen to you. Nothing bad can happen after you get HIV."
For some, the chase is a pragmatic move. They see HIV infection as
inevitable because of their unsafe sex or needle sharing, so they
decide to take control of the situation and infect themselves. It's
empowering. They're no longer victims waiting to be infected; rather
they are in charge of their own fates. For others, deliberately
infecting themselves is the ultimate taboo, the most extreme sex act
left on the planet, and that has a strong erotic appeal for some men
who have tried everything else. Still others feel lost and without any
community to embrace them, and they see those living with HIV as a
cohesive group that welcomes its new members and receives vast support
from the rest of the gay community, and from society as a whole. Bug
chasers want to be a part of that club. Some want HIV because they
think once they have it they can go on with a wild, uninhibited sex
life without constant fears of the virus. Getting the bug opens the
door to sexual nirvana, they say. Others can't stand the thought of
being so unlike their HIV-positive lover.
For Carlos, bug chasing is mostly about the excitement of doing
something that everyone else sees as crazy and wrong. Keeping this
part of his life secret is part of the turn-on for Carlos, which is
not his real name. That forbidden aspect makes HIV infection
incredibly exciting for him, so much so that he now seeks out sex
exclusively with HIV-positive men. "This is something that no one
knows about me," Carlos says. "It's mine. It's my dirty little
secret." He compares bug chasing to the thrill that you get by
screwing your boyfriend in your parents' house, or having sex on your
boss' desk. You're not supposed to do it, and that's exactly what
makes it so much fun, he says, laughing.
Carlos carries another secret that he says heightens the thrill of
pursuing HIV. Sometimes he volunteers in the offices of Gay Men's
Health Crisis, the pre-eminent HIV-prevention and AIDS-activist
organization in New York. And about once a month, he does outreach
volunteering in which he goes to clubs to hand out condoms and educate
men about safe sex.
Carlos should meet Doug Hitzel, but he probably never will. A year ago
they might have been online buddies, both sharing a passion for HIV
that few others understood. Now Hitzel understands all too clearly
what bug chasing can do to a young man's life, but it's too late for
him. After six months of bug chasing, Hitzel succeeded in getting the
virus. He's now a twenty-one-year-old freshman at a Midwestern
university, so wholesome-looking you'd think he just walked out of a
cornfield.
Hitzel's experience started when he moved from his home in Nebraska to
San Francisco with his boyfriend. When that relationship broke up,
Hitzel was at the lowest point in his life, and alone. He sought
relief in drugs and sex, as much of each as he could get. At first, he
started out just not caring whether he got HIV or not, then he found
the bug-chasing underground and embraced it. He was sure he'd get HIV
soon anyway. He thought he would always feel exactly like he did then;
he was certain that ten, twenty, thirty years later he'd still be
partying every night. It lasted only six months -- then Hitzel got
sick with awful flulike symptoms and lost a lot of weight. A doctor's
visit cleared him of hepatitis and other possible problems, but the
clinic sent him home with an HIV test he could do himself. Hitzel
waited before doing the test and decided to go home to Nebraska, to
give up the bug chasing and the rest of the life that was killing him.
Once he got home, he did the test and found out he was positive. He
now wakes up each day with a terrible frustration that's just below
the surface of his once sunny demeanor. He hates the medication he has
to take every day, and he realizes that HIV affects nearly every part
of his life. While he was bug chasing, Hitzel couldn't imagine ever
wanting to be in a relationship again. But now that he's getting his
life back in order, he realizes that being HIV-positive can be a
roadblock to new relationships.
"Whenever I have to deal with things like medication, days when I'm
really down," Hitzel says, "I have to look myself in the mirror and
say, 'You did this. Are you happy now?' That's the one line that goes
through my head: 'Are you happy now?' " He says it with a snarl, full
of anger. "Some days I feel really angry and guilty. I'm pretty much
adjusted to the fact that this is my life, but about forty percent of
the time I look at myself and say, 'Look what you've done. Happy now?'
"
Looking back on it, Hitzel says he was committing suicide by chasing
HIV, killing himself slowly because he didn't have the nerve to do it
quickly. Hitzel is ashamed and embarrassed that he actually sought
HIV, but he's willing to tell his story because he hopes to dissuade
others who are on the same path. He gets angry when he hears bug
chasers talking in the same ways he talked a year earlier. The mention
of "bug chasing" and "gift giving" sets him off.
" 'Bug chasing' sounds like a group of kindergartners running around
chasing grasshoppers and butterflies," Hitzel says, "a beautiful
thing. And gift giving? What the hell is that? I just wish the terms
would actually put some real context into what's going on. Why did I
not want to say that I was deliberately infecting myself? Because
saying the word infect sounds bad and gross and germy. I wanted it to
be sexualized." He's particularly angered by the idea of HIV being
erotic: "How about you follow me after I start new medications and you
watch me throw up for a few weeks? Tell me how erotic that is."
Though he's older, Carlos lives a life that has a lot in common with
Hitzel's in San Francisco. Carlos estimates that he has had several
hundred sex partners throughout his life, and he routinely hooks up
with three or four guys a week, all of them HIV-positive or at least
uncertain about their status.
That's a common trait among bug chasers, says Dr. Bob Cabaj, director
of behavioral-health services for San Francisco County and past
president of both the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association and the
Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists. Cabaj (pronounced
suh-bye) calls bug chasing "a real phenomenon." Some bug chasers are
more likely to have a defeatist attitude, to think they'll eventually
get HIV anyway, whereas others are more likely to add the element of
eroticizing HIV, Cabaj says: "For kids who have had a really hard time
fitting in or being accepted, this becomes like a fraternity."
As a public official, Cabaj is familiar with how the topic makes
people uncomfortable. Most AIDS activists prefer to deny that the
problem exists to any significant extent, he says: "They don't want to
address that this is a real ongoing issue."
When I asked about bug chasing, leaders of groups such as Gay Men's
Health Crisis in New York, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Stop
AIDS Project, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
weren't interested in providing much education or increasing public
awareness. To the contrary, most were dismissive of the issue and some
actively dissuaded me from writing the article at all. A spokeswoman
for the Stop AIDS Project, Shana Krochmal, characterized bug chasing
as "relatively minor acting-out" and aggressively encouraged me to
drop the article idea altogether, saying the issue is "not big enough
to warrant a trend story." Krochmal cautioned against focusing on
"just a bunch of really vocal guys who want to continue this image of
being reckless, hedonistic gay men who will do anything to get laid. I
think that does a disservice to the community at large." The San
Francisco AIDS Foundation labeled the issue "sensational" and would
not provide further comment. GLAAD spokeswoman Cathy Renna was more
helpful, saying she had heard enough about bug chasing to be
concerned, emphasizing that her group's focus would be whether people
use bug chasing as an easy way to disparage all gays and lesbians as
sex-crazed and reckless. "The vast majority of the gay community would
be just as surprised and appalled by this as anyone else," she says.
At GMHC, where Carlos is one of more than 7,000 volunteers, spokesman
Marty Algaze calls bug chasing "one of those very underground
subcultures or fetishes that seems to have sprung up in recent years."
The assistant director of community education at GMHC, Daniel
Castellanos, acknowledges that bug chasing exists but claims there's
not much need to discuss it because it involves such a small
population. But would he try to talk a bug chaser out of trying to get
HIV? "If someone comes to me and says he wants to get HIV, I might
work with him around why he wants to do it," he says. "But if in the
end that's a decision he wants to make, there's a point where we have
to respect people's decisions."
Cabaj, the San Francisco psychiatrist, says those arguments sound
familiar. Then, without being asked, he adds, "But I don't know if
it's an active cover-up." He pauses for a moment, then continues,
"Yeah, it's an active cover-up, because they know about it. They're in
denial of this issue. This is a difficult issue that dredges up some
images about gay men that they don't want to have to deal with. They
don't want to shine a light on this topic because they don't want
people to even know that this behavior exists."
Public-health officials also tend to dismiss the bug-chasing
phenomenon, he adds, assuming that it is just an aberration practiced
by a few, nothing more than a curiosity. Cabaj adamantly disagrees,
though he admits numbers are very hard to come by. Some men
consciously seek the virus, openly declaring themselves bug chasers,
he says, while many more are just as actively seeking HIV but are in
denial and wouldn't call themselves bug chasers. Cabaj estimates that
at least twenty-five percent of all newly infected gay men fall into
that category.
With about 40,000 new infections in the United States per year,
according to government reports, that would mean around 10,000 each
year are attributable to that more liberal definition of bug chasing.
Doug Hitzel says he fits that description. Though he now says he was a
bug chaser for six months, he explains that he would not have admitted
it to anyone outside the subculture, and he sometimes even lied to
himself about what he was doing. Even if you consider only the number
of self-proclaimed bug chasers and not the overall group of men
seeking HIV, Cabaj still sees cause for concern because of the way one
bug chaser's quest can spread the virus far beyond his own life. "It
may be a small number of actual people, but they may be
disproportionately involved in continuing the spread of HIV," he says.
"That's a major issue when you're talking about how to control the
spread of a virus. A small percentage could be responsible for
continuing the infection. The clinical impact is profound, no matter
how small the numbers."
The problem is not restricted to any one community. Cabaj's
counterpart in Boston reports a similar experience with bug chasers.
Dr. Marshall Forstein is medical director of mental health and
addiction services at Fenway Community Health, an arm of Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center that specializes in care for gay and lesbian
patients. Forstein is on the medical-school faculty in psychiatry at
Harvard University and chaired the American Psychiatric Association's
Commission on AIDS for eleven years. He says bug chasers are seen
regularly in the Fenway health system, and the phenomenon is growing.
He adds that bug chasers can be found in any major city, though
officials might be reluctant to discuss the issue either because it is
unseemly or because it has escaped their notice. A spokesman for the
Los Angeles County Department of Health confirms that bug chasers are
known in its health system. Public-health officials in New York
refused multiple requests for comment.
One standout in public-health circles is the Miami-Dade County Health
Department in Florida, which is taking steps specifically to address
bug chasing. Evelyn Ullah, director of its office of HIV/AIDS, readily
admits that bug chasing is "a definite problem" in the Miami area,
having become more common and more visible in the past few years.
Miami health officials regularly monitor Internet sites for bug
chasing in their community, and they keep track of "conversion
parties," in which the goal is to have positive men infect negative
men. The health department also is launching new outreach efforts that
include going online to chat with bug chasers and others pursuing
risky sex.
Cabaj and Forstein stress that more should be done, particularly on a
national level. For starters, federal health officials will have to
familiarize themselves with the problem. Dr. Robert Janssen, director
of the division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta, says he has never seen the Web
sites that promote bug chasing and does not know of any organized
efforts to spread the virus. There is virtually no research on people
who intentionally seek HIV, he says, but he notes that several studies
have shown a growing complacency among gay men and the population in
general about the risk of HIV and a misconception that HIV infection
is completely manageable. Ongoing outbreaks of syphilis and gonorrhea
(which Carlos recently had) in large cities indicate a tendency to
forgo condom use, he says. Recent data from the CDC show that syphilis
rates among men in the United States rose 15.4 percent between 2000
and 2001, which the researchers attribute to outbreaks among gay and
bisexual men in several U.S. cities. Janssen says the CDC has not
addressed bug chasing in any way but might if researchers determine
that it is a significant method of spreading the virus. "I'm
interested that you're saying there's that much out there on the Web
and that it's easy to find," Janssen says. "If we can confirm that
it's happening to any real degree beyond just an anecdote here and
there, we may need to address it."
What frustrates health-care professionals the most, Forstein says, is
that "gay men who are doing this haven't a clue what they're doing,"
he says. "They're incredibly selfish and self-absorbed. They don't
have any idea what's going on with the epidemic in terms of the world
or society or what impact their actions might have. The sense of being
my brother's keeper is never discussed in the gay community because
we've gone to the extreme of saying gay men with HIV can do no wrong.
They're poor victims, and we can't ever criticize them."
Furthering the epidemic doesn't bother Carlos. Bug chasing requires a
great deal of self-delusion, and he easily acknowledges the
contradictions in what he's doing. He notes that while he seeks HIV,
he doesn't eat junk food or smoke, and that he drinks only socially.
"I take care of myself," he says proudly. He also notes the hypocrisy
in his doing volunteer work at GMHC, in which he tells other men to
use condoms and practice safe sex, while he's hunting for partners for
his secret hobby. The conflict doesn't bother him in the least.
Forstein says that attitude is disastrous for gay men. "We're killing
each other," he says. "It's no longer just the Matthew Shepards that
are dying at the hands of others. We're killing each other. We have to
take responsibility for this as a community."
After several phone calls to work out a time, Carlos is ready to go
see Richard. He's had sex with Richard about thirty times in the past
year. "Knowing he's positive just makes it more fun for me," he says.
"It's erotic that someone is breeding me." Richard is in the
entertainment business, in his mid- to late forties.
"Lots of guys want to know who breeds them," Carlos continues. "When I
have sex, I like to always make it special, a really good time,
something nice and memorable in case that is the one that gives it to
me."
Carlos offers, not for the first time, to have me come along and watch
him and Richard have sex, but I decline. In the taxi to Richard's
place, the conversation falls silent. He hasn't been tested in a
couple of years, and he's reluctant to get a test now. He might very
well be positive already. But as long as he doesn't know for sure, he
can always hope that tonight is the night he gets the virus. Every
date is potentially The One. Stepping out of the cab into the rain, I
ask what he will do if he finds out one day that he has succeeded in
being infected -- ending the fun of being a bug chaser. He stops, then
says he might move on to being a gift giver: "If I know that he's
negative and I'm fucking him, it sort of gets me off. I'm murdering
him in a sense, killing him slowly, and that's sort of, as sick as it
sounds, exciting to me."
GREGORY A. FREEMAN
(February 6, 2003)
Don Saklad
SEX RULE number 1.
Sex is more important than dying.
SEX RULE number 2.
Sex is more important than murdering somebody.
SEX RULE number 3.
If people could change their sexual behavior we wouldn't be here.
Weblog. The strategy potential sex partners getting tested together
for the standard sexually transmitted infections
Stories
http://NotB4WeKnow.EditThisPage.com/stories
Frank Martin
> I flamed this newsgroups several years ago because I thought you guys
> were a bunch of degenerates who actively sought out HIV and deliberately
> infected others with it. This article proves that I was right...
No. The article proves that Rolling Stone's magazine belongs in the gutter.
http://salon.com/opinion/sullivan/2003/01/24/rolling/print.html
Frank
Gary J. Minter
much on the mark, IMO. There are thousands of straight, gay, and all
sorts of sex sites on the internet, catering to just about every
preference or fetish imaginable...and some I would never have
imagined! There are straight "swingers" clubs, spouse-swapping, crack
whores, trading sex for drugs...
I worked for three years as one of the "sex police" who tracked down,
interviewed, did partner tracing, and referred for treatment and
counseling, people who were HIV+ or syphilis+, and their sex and
needlesharing partners.
There are lots of people--straight and gay--who know or suspect they
are HIV+ who have unprotected sex with others, sometimes many others.
People--especially sexually active young people, gay and straight--are
getting casual about sex again, not using condoms, and having
promiscuous sex.
I think it's a problem that the upbeat advertising by AIDS drug
manufacturers has given the impression that the "new" drugs can give
someone who is HIV+ a long, normal life with glowing health, beauty
and stamina. It would be nice, but it's not true. The length of life
of someone who is newly-infected with HIV has,
to the best of my knowledge, on the average remained at about 12 years
since the very beginning of the "epidemic", and even among untreated
Africans with "slim disease" (HIV-1), was about 10 years from
infection to development of AIDS.
With or without the "new drugs" HIV infection is no picnic.
I also heard Sean Hannity gloating on-air about the Rolling Stone
article-- "bug chasing" will be another stick with which those who are
homophobic can beat the gay community. Gay-bashers don't say too much
about lesbians, maybe because the rate of
HIV among lesbians is lower than that among straight women...though
according to a lesbian woman named "Conscious", who is HIV+ and wrote
a book called "Getting
Unstuck" about her abuse as a child, drug involvement, and HIV
infection, female to female transmission does occur. I heard
"Conscious" on a syndicated radio show, and her website is
www.prettytomboys.com---she has an interesting story.
The media loves stories that are dramatic, outrageous, sexy, and
scandalous, and
this "bug chasing" story fits the bill!
buff...@hotmail.com (Frank Martin) wrote in message news:<553fffbb.03012...@posting.google.com>...
Baby Peanut
Outrage as magazine claims gay men are seeking out HIV infection
TARA WOMERSLEY HEALTH CORRESPONDENT
A QUARTER of new HIV infections among gay men in the United States are
deliberately contracted by men seeking to become infected, according
to an article that is causing outrage across the Atlantic.
The report, commissioned by Rolling Stone's new British editor, Ed
Needham, has provoked uproar among homosexuals, while also being
dismissed by public health experts.
But Mr Needham, who said that the magazine needed to "punch its weight
a little bit more" when he took over as editor last year, has insisted
he has complete confidence in the report and is standing by its
author, Gregory Freeman.
The article addresses the so-called phenomenon of "bug chasing", where
gay men supposedly seek out the HIV virus. It highlights the case of
Carlos, 32, who claims that he has been trying to become infected for
a number of years and states that the moment of transmission will be
"the most erotic thing [he] can imagine".
Dr Bob Cabaj, director of behavioural health services for San
Francisco and a past president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical
Association, is cited in the feature as stating that up to a quarter
of newly HIV infected gay men had sought out the virus on purpose. He
was subsequently reported denying that he used this figure but has
admitted that the practice is more prevalent than many would like to
admit.
In the magazine article Carlos, from New York, claims that should he
become infected with HIV he would enjoy spreading the virus to a new
partner. "I'm murdering him in a sense, killing him slowly, and that's
sort of, as sick as it sounds, exciting to me," he said.
Cathy Renna, spokeswoman for the New York-based Gay and Lesbian
Alliance Against Defamation, described the Rolling Stone story as
unhelpful.
She said: "It's an easy way to disparage all gays and lesbians as
sex-crazed fanatics."
Dr Marshall Forstein, medical director of mental health and addiction
services at the Boston-based Fenway Community Health Centre, said that
he had seen two such cases in the past three years and that he could
count how many he had seen in the past 21 years on one hand.
He added: "The real phenomenon in the gay community is that many gay
men do not take safe sex seriously."
The Rolling Stone article also tells the story of Doug Hitzel, 21,
from San Francisco, who embraced the "bug chasing" culture after
deciding that it was inevitable that he would become HIV positive. He
has since been diagnosed with the virus and deeply regrets his past
behaviour while scorning the use of phrases such as "gift giving",
which refers to passing HIV on to someone else.
A film, The Gift, featuring Mr Hitzel, is to be screened at the Berlin
International Film Festival next month.
Mr Hitzel told Rolling Stone: "And gift giving? What the hell is that?
I just wish the terms would actually put some real context into what's
going on. Why did I not want to say that I was deliberately infecting
myself?"
"From the very start it has been a touchy issue for everyone involved.
I can only guess that now it's getting a lot of attention, people are
getting worried," said Mr Needham, defending his article.
gjmi...@earthlink.net (Gary J. Minter) wrote in message news:<55540365.0301...@posting.google.com>...
Baby Peanut
> were a bunch of degenerates who actively sought out HIV and deliberately
> infected others with it. This article proves that I was right...
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=17380
>
> Bug Chasers
>
> The men who long to be HIV+
>
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0305/savage.php
Savage Love
by Dan Savage
January 29 - February 4, 2003
On the Drudge Report today I read what must be a bunch of shit or a
complete hoax: "Mag: 25% of New HIV-Infected Gay Men Sought Out Virus,
Says San Fran Health Official." Is there any truth to this? The link
was e-mailed all over my office, and it makes gay men look awful. Can
you prove or disprove Matt Drudge's outrageous claims? I sincerely
hope it's not true and that Matt Drudge's "journalist" badge is
revoked! —Can't Trust Drudge
The claim that 25 percent of all new HIV infections in gay men are
intentional wasn't made by Drudge. He doesn't do much actual
reporting; his Web site is almost entirely composed of links to
stories in other publications. (What would the Washington Post Web
site do without Drudge?) Drudge disseminated a claim made in the
February 6 Rolling Stone. Gregory Freeman wrote the story that
Drudge—who takes a perverse delight in pumping stories that make gay
men look awful—trumpets. Freeman's piece focuses on so-called "bug
chasers," HIV-negative gay men actively trying to get infected, and
"gift givers," HIV-positive gay men who are only too happy to infect
others. After a depressing slog through the cracked thinking of one
bug chaser, Freeman whips a little amateur psychoanalysis on us
("[Some] see HIV infection as inevitable . . . so they decide to take
control of the situation and infect themselves. For others,
deliberately infecting themselves is the ultimate taboo . . . and that
has a strong erotic appeal for some men who have tried everything
else"), then introduces Dr. Bob Cabaj, director of behavioral-health
services for San Francisco County. "Some men consciously seek the
virus," Freeman writes, paraphrasing Cabaj, "while many more are just
as actively seeking HIV but are in denial and wouldn't call themselves
bug chasers." Then Freeman blows his wad: "Cabaj estimates that at
least 25 percent of all newly infected gay men fall into that
category," i.e., guys consciously or subconsciously seeking the virus.
The day after Drudge broke the story, Cabaj accused Freeman of
fabricating his quotes. In an interview with Newsweek, Cabaj denied
ever saying that 25 percent of the new infections in gay men are due
to bug chasing. Freeman told Newsweek he quoted Cabaj accurately and
implied that Cabaj got cold feet once the story hit the cable news
talk shows. "I can only imagine that now that it's getting a lot of
attention," Freeman told Newsweek, "people are getting worried."
Rolling Stone's editors defended Freeman and their fact checkers in
the Newsweek story.
Who to believe? On the one hand, I know from personal experience that
at least 25 percent of the people who work in AIDS—how can I put this
nicely?—are gutless wonders. Such people have told me things in
on-the-record interviews that they denied saying once their quotes
were published and the shit hit the fan. On the other hand, Freeman
goes on to make such a huge, glaring, obvious error that any
reasonable person has to doubt his skills as a reporter—and even his
motives. After trotting out the 25 percent figure, Freeman writes
this: "With about 40,000 new infections in the United States per year,
according to government reports, that would mean around 10,000 each
year are attributable to that more liberal definition of bug chasing."
Uh, no. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate
that there are "approximately 40,000 new HIV infections occurring in
the United States every year," only 42 percent of the total figure are
occurring in men who have sex with men. (The rest of the infections
are attributed to heterosexual sex and IV drug use.) That means the
number of new infections in gay and bisexual men each year is roughly
17,000, not 40,000. Even if that sensational 25 percent figure is
accurate—and that's one motherfuckin' huge if—that would mean there
are "only" 4200 conscious and subconscious bug chasers getting
infected every year, not 10,000. By lumping conscious bug chasers (a
very small number of very crazy assholes) in with subconscious bug
chasers (a comparatively large number of self-destructive gay dopes),
Freeman distorts the scale of the problem. Considering how badly he
botched some relatively simple and widely available stats, Freeman's
entire piece may be easily dismissed. But the damage has been
done—thanks in part to Drudge—and the 25 percent figure, as Andrew
Sullivan complained on Salon last week, "will soon be accepted as
fact," despite the story having "completely fallen apart." Personally,
I don't think it has completely fallen apart, nor I do think it should
be dismissed. While the 25 percent figure is clearly bullshit, the
barebacking Web sites Freeman writes about are real and some men with
HIV are only too willing to engage in unprotected sex with guys who
aren't HIV-positive. And before gay men congratulate themselves for
"only" making up 42 percent of all new HIV infections, consider this:
Gay and bisexual men make up only 3 percent of the population.
Regardless of how gay men are getting the virus—bug chasing? stupid
risk-taking?—they are getting infected at appalling rates. Why?
There's a clue in Freeman's piece. Daniel Castellanos, assistant
director of community education at Gay Men's Health Crisis in New
York, acknowledges that the bug chasing phenomenon is real. Would he
try to talk someone out of trying to catch HIV? "If someone comes to
me and says he wants to get HIV," Castellanos replies, "I might work
with him around why he wants to do it. . . . But if in the end that's
a decision he wants to make, there's a point where we have to respect
people's decisions."
While active "bug chasing" may only account for a handful of new
infections in gay men, the inability of HIV/AIDS educators to
aggressively challenge gay men surely accounts for a large chunk.
Since the arrival of effective treatments for HIV, gay men in urban
areas have been busily re-creating the kind of sexual subcultures that
laid out the welcome mat for HIV in the '70s. Infection rates for HIV
and other STDs are soaring and—who knows?—perhaps some unknown STD is
gaining a toehold in urban gay scenes, just as HIV did in the '70s. At
the same time, the education strategy in vogue at GMHC and other AIDS
organizations is this: We must respect the decisions gay men make—up
to and including the decision to get infected with HIV for shits and
giggles. It's a bizarre and, judging from those HIV infection rates,
shockingly ineffective strategy. It's time for GMHC and other AIDS
groups to start telling gay men the truth. Taking stupid sexual
risks—even if risk turns you on—is reckless; anal sex on the first
date—even with condoms—is a bad idea; giving someone HIV—even if he
wants it—is immoral; being a huge fucking slut—as popular as that
might make you—has physical and emotional consequences. Gay men need
to be told that stupid decisions don't deserve anyone's respect.
So long as AIDS educators refuse to challenge gay men, HIV infection
rates will continue to rise. That's the real scandal, CTD.