dk

Ignorance breeds fear, not disclosure. You can't fight a disease with secrecy. Responsiblity, freedom and liberty require people to be informed, ignorance is the enemy. After 40 years of sex education (whatever that means) we don't have a clue what programs work because sex ed isn't tied to hard goals, but shrouded in "safe sex" psychobabble.

Kimpatsu

Safe sex isn't psychobabble. And mandatory testing is still a violation of individual rights. Why don't you answer that charge?

dk

I don’t know what to tell you, but the people most at risk don’t like using condoms, especially gay people and young people. This isn’t sexual liberty but Russian roulette. These people are out of control, drunk with decadence. You are in denial. Giving intimate access to children with SSM spells disaster.

Kimpatsu

So what? This is none of your concern. Using loaded value-words like "decadance" simply highlights the fact that your operating out of a twisted sense of morality, trying to impose your views on others, rather than educate them as to the dangers posed by unprotected sex. Would you rather they had no sex at all?

dk

I'm sorry if I've offended you, but the issues are real and concern everyone. You're the one determined to make a health concern into a moral issue. This demonstrates what's wrong with the quilt of deniablity and political correctness.

Kimpatsu

You haven't offended me, I just despair at the nonsense you espouse. I find your blithe assumption that you know what's best for other adults dangerous. Coercion is not the way forward.

dk

I also find it difficult to comform to nonsense. Gay men playing the public sympathy card have become transparent with new found political power. Its nonsense because they only destroy themselves and their proteges with a quilt of deniablity, like a dog returns to his own vomit and a fool repeats his own folly.

Kimpatsu

What is it with you and this "quilt of deniability"? And why do you hate homosexuals so much?

FOIL

I've wondered about the "quilt comments" myself, dk. It seems to me it represents an oblique reference to the AIDS quilt project, but in my opinion, linking that with the "agenda" you believe gays are attempting to promote is the moral equivalent of Fred Phelps protesting Matthew Shephard's funeral. If that's what you're doing, it's reprehensible opportunism. I hope that's not your intent.

Kimpatsu: FWIW, I don't sense any "hatred" of homosexuals in dk's posts. I see a lot of concern, perhaps misplaced, and a good deal of confusion, but no hatred. I think he's even said that it's not homosexuality per se that bothers him, but the irresponsible actions of some homosexuals.

dk: I'm working on a substantive response to your last post. I hope to have it posted later today.

FOIL

Treacle Worshipper

Originally posted by dk

dk, with my rapist/infanticide comparison, I was trying to address the compulsion aspect of your suggestion. This seems to be something you do not wish to discuss.

dk: Its 20+ years since the epidemic broke out in gay communities and 20% of people with the virus are ignorant of their serostatus.

By definition, that must be an estimation. If the people themselves are unaware of their status, then certainly no-one else is.

The incubation period is 5 years.

Incubation period of what?

There has been no backlash against gay people.

And you have been living where?

People benefit by knowing they are carriers for three reasons 1) to seek treatment 2) to take precautions not to spread the virus and 3) to track and deter anyone that poses a public health risk. This is a public health issue not a privacy issue. Gay youth (14-23) in some metropolitan areas are being infected at a 4% rate per/year. I can’t imagine why anyone would object to tracking an illness, least of all the people of an at risk population.

I agree that treatment, prevention and tracking the disease are all good things. Again, what I dislike is the idea of compulsion. Unless you are going to test every person on the planet who is or has been sexually active [tracking], and then follow them round making sure they take their pills [treatment] and use protection (or remain celibate) [prevention], it's not going to work. People will take stupid risks and act irresponsibly, because they're people. It doesn't make their behaviour a good thing, but it does make it unavoidable. Unless you advocate giving every person over the age of 13 a "sex-minder" to follow them round all the time and make sure they damn well don't do anything stupid.

dk: It’s a small world. In the US metropolitan areas of NYC, SFS and LA house about 25% of the gays in the US, so they would be analogous to London.

I thought we were talking about schoolkids and the need for metal detectors and drug-sniffing dogs?

Treacle Worshipper: My GP. (General practitioner. I think "primary care provider" is the US equivalent.) It takes 3 months for antibodies to the HIV virus to appear in the bloodstream in high enough levels that they can be picked up by a test. If someone tests -ve one day, they could go out & have unsafe sex that evening. You would have to wait 3 months & re-test in order to be sure that they were still -ve.
dk: > 20% of hiv+ people in the US have not been tested.

So you stated above, but what does that have to do with a) where my information comes from (which is the question that I was responding to) or b) the fact that even if everybody had been tested, you'd have to keep re-testing them to continue to be certain that they were HIV-?

dk: HIV’s a serious problem in the London area where most gays live in the UK. In South Africa there’s >4mil people >20% of the population carry the virus. The scope and magnitude of the hiv/aids problem in Sub Saharan Africa is beyond me. There’s no one size fit all approach. Civilizations and nations grow and prosper by solving problems that arise from time to time. It seems pretty clear to me that wherever promiscuous anonymous sex flourishes so does HIV/AIDs.

So do numerous other STDs, which in past centuries were also used as reasons for not having multiple sex partners. Then we got antibiotics, and the vast majority of those diseases became treatable. When they find a cure for AIDS, I'm sure something else will come along which will make sex equally risky.

<snip info>

The UK can take whatever lessons seem applicable, the first step to stop hiv/aids stops the spread to new generations.

But, again, this is not a problem in UK schools. If you look here you will see that the age groups most at risk from HIV/AIDS in the UK are 20yrs+. It seems that whatever is being done in the UK education system to increase people's knowledge of STDs & HIV/AIDS is working.

TW