The Personal AIDS Story Column

Earlier this week there was a column in the Milwaukee paper by a gay reporter with AIDS. He had covered the AIDS pandemic for most of his professional career. As with many who get a bad diagnosis, he sunk into denial that he had HIV/AIDS. It just couldn't happen to him. But, he obviously had put himself at risk. He had multiple partners and was with a new one, he might even love. Even with condoms, which he never claimed to use, his risk was still high for infection with a deadly disease. He made choices that aren't turning out too well.

The problem is our STD/HIV prevention strategy relies on information to keep people safe from risk behaviors. It is assumed that if we just give people the facts they will make informed decisions. This was a man who should have had all the facts since it was his job to convey them. Yet, this professional journalist didn't use the knowledge to avoid the disease even though he was a member of the highest risk group. So how do we expect teenagers to make decisions based on information when their brains aren't even mature enough to analyze the information?

We have a health policy based on risk reduction, not disease prevention. A condom is touted as the panecea for STD/HIV. The danger is in biased information; facts about condom effectiveness and real life usage are skipped to "manipulate" people to use condoms.

AIDS is still a killer in most of the world. 85% condom effectiveness rate isn't much of a safety net for anyone who has multiple partners or just one infected partner. Choose the wrong sexual behavior and you will pay. That is the truth. I have a feeling that was a piece of information that reporter never mentioned. You protect what is important to you--for many people, it's the sex; not how many people get the diseases. Millions of lives just aren't enough to sacrifice, I guess, for the sexual thrill.