VOX.com
German Lopez
February 24, 2016
In the US, half of black men who have sex with men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime. About a quarter of Latino men who have sex with men will as well.
Those are the startling conclusions of a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released Tuesday. It looked at groups at risk for HIV, identifying black men who have sex with men as those at greatest risk.
Here are the results for men who have sex with men (MSM), injection drug users, and people who have sex with the opposite sex:
Here are the results for men who have sex with men, broken down by race and ethnicity:
Overall, black men are at the greatest risk for HIV among different racial and ethnic groups, while white men are at much lower risk:
Geography matters too. The South and some parts of the Northeast appear to be at the greatest risk:
The good news: Overall risk for HIV has dropped. A previous report based on 2004 to 2005 data put the lifetime risk for all Americans at 1 in 78. It is now 1 in 99, according to the new CDC report.
HIV is also less deadly than it used to be, largely thanks to antiretroviral medications that can turn the disease from a death sentence into a chronic illness. And we know that condoms can help prevent transmission, as well as new medications like Truvada.
The CDC didn't release the new numbers just to despair at the situation, but rather as a call to action.
"As alarming as these lifetime risk estimates are, they are not a foregone conclusion. They are a call to action," Jonathan Mermin, director of CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention, said in a statement. "The prevention and care strategies we have at our disposal today provide a promising outlook for future reductions of HIV infections and disparities in the US, but hundreds of thousands of people will be diagnosed in their lifetime if we don't scale up efforts now."
Thankfully, even the gridlocked Congress appears to be stepping up the battle against HIV. In December, Congress quietly unlocked some federal funding for clean needle exchange programs that provide clean needles to drug users, which have proved to reduce HIV transmissions without major downsides. Of course, that was only after the federal government banned federal funding for such programs for years, causing unnecessary deaths.
Still, many Americans seem to think of the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a thing of the past. For many populations in the US, it's not. The CDC wants to make that clear — and push for more action to stop the epidemic.
In the US, half of black men who have sex with men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime. About a quarter of Latino men who have sex with men will as well.
Those are the startling conclusions of a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released Tuesday. It looked at groups at risk for HIV, identifying black men who have sex with men as those at greatest risk.
Here are the results for men who have sex with men (MSM), injection drug users, and people who have sex with the opposite sex:
Overall, black men are at the greatest risk for HIV among different racial and ethnic groups, while white men are at much lower risk:
The good news: Overall risk for HIV has dropped. A previous report based on 2004 to 2005 data put the lifetime risk for all Americans at 1 in 78. It is now 1 in 99, according to the new CDC report.
HIV is also less deadly than it used to be, largely thanks to antiretroviral medications that can turn the disease from a death sentence into a chronic illness. And we know that condoms can help prevent transmission, as well as new medications like Truvada.
The CDC didn't release the new numbers just to despair at the situation, but rather as a call to action.
"As alarming as these lifetime risk estimates are, they are not a foregone conclusion. They are a call to action," Jonathan Mermin, director of CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention, said in a statement. "The prevention and care strategies we have at our disposal today provide a promising outlook for future reductions of HIV infections and disparities in the US, but hundreds of thousands of people will be diagnosed in their lifetime if we don't scale up efforts now."
Thankfully, even the gridlocked Congress appears to be stepping up the battle against HIV. In December, Congress quietly unlocked some federal funding for clean needle exchange programs that provide clean needles to drug users, which have proved to reduce HIV transmissions without major downsides. Of course, that was only after the federal government banned federal funding for such programs for years, causing unnecessary deaths.
Still, many Americans seem to think of the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a thing of the past. For many populations in the US, it's not. The CDC wants to make that clear — and push for more action to stop the epidemic.
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So what's going on here...
In my considered opinion, this disparate impact on gay black men is being driven by culture issues. It's no secret that black people in America live in a culture of death. It's sung about in rap and hip hop music, and it's quietly acquiesced to by everyone from grandparents to toddlers when we all acknowledge that we're far more likely to die in virtually every life-threatening situation we encounter in life. So why would HIV/AIDS be any different. As a result of these beliefs, black people are far more likely to engage in risky behavior believing that mitigating risk is useless since something is going to get us anyway.
Then add the gay dynamic to the mix and it's easy to see why the numbers stack up the way they do. Black gay men are far more likely to be in the closet ("on the down low") than their non-black counterparts in American society. Black culture tends to be far more homophobic than society at large and this leads to black gay men living their lives in the shadows, and of course "things get done in the dark that would never happen in the light." Add to all this the ubiquitous ease of arranging casual and anonymous sex in the smart phone driven hook up era we live in and it's only logical that this is the result.
So, how do we solve this...
It will require a huge culture shift in the black community at large and in the black gay community in particular. It's time to come out and be visible in our communities for who and what we are. When we can live openly and then believe we can achieve the dreams that we've been taught in childhood (love, marriage, family life), only then will we have no need to pursue the sad "imitation of life" found in the shadows of living "on the down low." Only truth and honesty can free black gay men from the behaviors and ignorance that breeds death and disease and rampant homophobia and the culture of death that pervades everyday black life.
"Fear Eats the Soul"
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