Tag Archives: HIV

News

43-year-old teacher with HIV admits having sex with teen

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From CBS local news in Texas, of all places.

Excerpt:

A North Texas teacher, who is HIV positive, was caught leaving the home of a 15-year-old boy. Police say when Roger “Joe” Kessler was questioned and he admitted having a sexual relationship with the teen. Now Kessler is charged with sexual assault of a child.

The details from his arresting documents are disturbing and have both law enforcement and Richardson ISD officials on alert.

Kessler is a music teacher at Richardson ISD Academy. The 43-year-old is the man police say admitted to having sex with a 15-year-old boy, at least four times. And authorities say the sexual acts were performed without Kessler telling the teen he has HIV.

McKinney police say they were called to a home in the 1300 block of Gough Street on Wednesday. While authorities were responding to a burglary in progress, they arrived to Kessler being detained by the homeowner.

Apparently the teenager’s mother had arrived home and thought her home had been burgled, because she saw a man leaving her backyard.

Further investigation revealed Kessler was trying to run away from the house where he admitted to having just had a sexual encounter with the teen.

Court documents detail how Kessler and the 15-year-old met using a smart phone application called Grindr. The app bills itself as a “popular all-male location-based social network,” but is known as a place for men looking for sex to connect.

According to police documents, Kessler even logged on to Grindr and showed officers at the scene a series of text messages he had exchanged with the teen.

Previously, I wrote about a Center for Disease Control report that found that men who have sex with men were 150 times more likely to contract HIV, and another CDC report that found that 62% of men who have unprotected sex with other men know they have HIV.

News

HIV/AIDS researcher fired for accurate but politically incorrect testimony

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Legal Insurrection provides the background.

Excerpt:

The background is that the Belize Supreme Court is considering a court case seeking to overturn Section 53 of the criminal code, which bans some forms of homosexual behavior, specifically male-on-male sodomy. Argument was held in May 2013 but there has been no decision as of this writing.

The highly charged nature of the case pits a coalition of international gay rights activists against some Christian churches and groups.

Enter Dr. Brendan Bain, who retired as a Professor in 2013 from the University of West Indies.  While still a professor, in 2012 Dr. Bain submitted testimony in the form of an Expert Report in the case (embedded in full at the bottom of this post).

[…]The general thesis of the Expert Report was as follows, in part:

This report shows that the relative risk of contracting HIV is significantly higher among men who have sex with other men (MSM) in Belize than in the general population. This is also true in several other countries for which data are available, including countries that have repealed the law that criminalizes anal sex and countries where the law still applies.

So did the report contain false information? No.

From the Jamaica Observer.

Excerpt:

The National AIDS Committee (NAC) early Thursday issued a statement saying that “it takes no issue with, and has no objection to the actual content of the report of Professor Brendan Bain to the Court in Belize”.

Bain was fired from his post as director of the Regional Co-ordinating Unit of the Caribbean HIV/AIDS Regional Training Network (CHART) by the University of the West Indies for statements regarding men who have sex with men that he made as an expert witness in a Belize court case.

But according to the NAC, “there is nothing in that report which is contrary to, or offensive to the work of the National AIDS Committee.”

The NAC is a non- government organisation established in 1988 “to facilitate multi-sectoral collaboration to reduce the negative impact of HIV/AIDS on the Jamaican society and promote an informed, supportive and caring environment that empowers persons living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.”

[…]In his report, Professor Bain highlighted for the court that homosexual men were at higher risk of contracting HIV and other sexual transmitted infections and that a supportive environment is needed at the community and governmental levels to enable high risk groups to access and practice safe sex.

What’s wrong with saying that men who have sex with men are at a higher risk of contracting HIV / AIDS? It’s not politically correct, so he had to go.

I’m sure his numbers were similar to those of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), which makes the same point about men who have sex with men.

CDC numbers were also recently reported in the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

Teens and young adults now account for more than a quarter of the new cases of HIV identified in the United States annually, and a clear majority of those cases involve young gay or bisexual men, the federal government said in a major new survey Tuesday.

Of the nearly 48,000 new HIV cases identified in the United States in 2010, the latest year for which complete data are available, more than 12,000 involved teens and young adults, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found in its latest report.

About 72 percent of these new HIV cases in younger adults occurred in young men who are gay or bisexual, according to the CDC report.

[…]According to the CDC figures, black youths accounted for the largest share of new HIV cases, with Hispanic youths and white youths accounting for about 20 percent each.

About 1.1 million people are estimated to be living with HIV in the United States. Some 47,129 new HIV cases were identified in 2010.

The CDC’s new report, “Vital Signs: HIV Infection, Testing, Risk Behaviors Among Youths, United States,” estimated that youths aged 13 to 24 accounted for 12,200, or 26 percent, of new HIV infections in 2010.

Of these new cases, 7,000 were among black youths, 2,390 were among Hispanics, and 2,380 were among whites.

About 8,800 cases were attributed to male-to-male sexual contact.

HIV/AIDS is incurable, and an estimated 17,774 people with AIDS died in 2009. Some 619,000 persons have died of AIDS in the United States since the epidemic began in the early 1980s, according to the CDC.

I’m really not sure why people who insist on suppressing numbers like this think they are doing good. If something is dangerous, the good thing to do is to tell other people the danger. Not to fire people who tell other people the danger. That’s wrong.

News

CDC report: syphilis resurgence among gay men a “major public health concern”

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Breitbart reports on a new CDC study.

Excerpt:

The sometimes-deadly disease syphilis is exploding in the United States, with most of the increase since 1995 among men who have sex with men (MSM), according to a new report from the Atlanta-based Center for Disease Control (CDC).

As recently as 2000, researchers believed the total elimination of syphilis was within reach. The recent dramatic increases in infections, coupled with the observation that syphilis closely tracks with other diseases like AIDS, have the medical and scientific community deeply concerned. The CDC report considers “the increase in syphilis among MSM is a major public health concern.”

According to the report, “During 2005-2013, the number of primary and secondary syphilis cases reported each year in the United States nearly doubled, from 8,724 to 16,663; the annual rate increased from 2.9 to 5.3 cases per 100,000 population.”

The report also says that “men contributed an increasing proportion of cases, accounting for 91.1% of all primary and secondary syphilis cases in 2013.” Most of the increases came from men who have sex with men, which were responsible for 77% of cases in 2009 but 83.9% in 2012, what the report calls “the vast majority of male… syphilis cases.”

The report warns that the numbers in the new report are likely far less than the true number because only 34 states and the District of Columbia fully report sex of sex partners.

The report raises a particular concern about what it calls “co-infection rates.” “There are reported rates of 50%-70% HIV co-infection among MSM infected with primary or secondary syphilis…”

I really recommend reading that whole post, there are some really striking pieces of data in it.

When we are discussing what to promote and what to disagree with, this CDC data should be on the table. And remember, the closer we move to the single-payer system desired by the political left, the more people who don’t engage in risky behaviors will be taxed to pay for those that do choose to engage in risky behaviors. It’s fine for those who are not ambitious, but if you expect to earn enough to support a family, then you might find it’s much harder than it used to be before we were celebrating things the sexual revolution, which goes far beyond the problems the CDC outlined, into the costs of no-fault divorce, fatherlessness, etc.

We really ought not be celebrating the homosexual lifestyle / orientation. We should be treating this like smoking or obesity, if we really cared about the health of people with these same-sex attractions. It’s possible to express disagreement and to tell the truth about risks and consequences without hurting anyone’s feelings. I like to know what will happen to me if I make certain choices. It’s good to have the facts before you decide what to do.