Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 5, 1994 TAG: 9407050047
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
DATELINE: SEATTLE LENGTH: Medium
"There clearly is a resurgence [of unsafe sex]," said Dr. Robert Wood, director of AIDS control for the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health. "Unless we change it now, it could well be that 50 percent of gays for the foreseeable future will end up being infected with HIV."
Signs of a resurgence of unprotected sex have forced some tough soul-searching in the gay community and a reassessment by health professionals of efforts to prevent AIDS.
After years of insisting AIDS isn't just a gay disease, some activists want the spotlight put back on unsafe gay sex.
"We're exhausted watching our friends die," said Steven Johnson, an AIDS activist and member of the Governor's Advisory Council on AIDS in Washington state.
Health educators are thinking how to reshape and redirect the safer-sex message in the second decade of AIDS. Seattle and surrounding King County have 90 percent of the AIDS cases, yet less than half the public money spent on AIDS prevention is directed at gay men.
No single accurate measure of unsafe sex exists, but one key indicator has shown a marked increase: Gonorrhea infection among gay men in King County is more than three times its 1988 low. In addition, several local and national surveys of gay men lead researchers to believe that perhaps a third or so of homosexual men from time to time have unsafe sex. And in San Francisco, where AIDS trends historically emerge, infection rates are rising.
AIDS is caused by HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, breaks down the immune system, though someone who has tested positive for HIV may live years without developing AIDS.
Since the prospect of a cure seems more distant than when AIDS came to public awareness 13 years ago, safe sex has shifted from a short-term prevention strategy to a lifetime commitment, a standard difficult for some to sustain.
Some gay men slip into unsafe behavior when passion, drugs or alcohol clouds their judgment. Others having survived a decade of AIDS become complacent about the risk. Many long for affection without latex barriers.
"It's a struggle for all of us," said Jay Larson, 40, a Seattle legal assistant committed to safer sex. "A factor of intimacy has been taken away."
Unsafe sexual behavior also is common with heterosexuals, experts say, but public health concern about homosexual relapses is acute because of the concentration of AIDS among gays.
Researchers and activists are especially alarmed by anecdotal evidence of some gay men becoming fatalistic about AIDS after seeing friend after friend die.
"Thirteen years in the gay AIDS crisis, gay men are getting exhausted," said Dan Savage, an AIDS activist and sex-advice columnist for The Stranger, a Seattle weekly. "It's just a nightmare. You feel like you're standing at an abyss - you might as well get it over with."
by CNB