HIV study: 76% drop in cases with expanded treatment!

New HIV infections among gay and bisexual men in San Francisco could fall 76 percent over the next five years due to the city's push to test people for the virus and advice that those infected begin taking antiretroviral therapy regardless of their CD4 T-cell count, say UCSF researchers.

The finding is the result of a study conducted by Edwin Charlebois, MPH Ph.D., an associate professor of medicine at UCSF, and colleagues to be published in the April 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases .

"By expanding when we start antiretroviral therapy to people already in care we can have a significant impact on the HIV epidemic here in San Francisco," Charlebois told the Bay Area Reporter in a phone interview.

HEALTH: Should We Lift Ban on HIV-Positive Organ Donors?

The US has, as one doctor says, a "huge organ shortage"—but there is one way we could make 500 to 600 more livers and kidneys available each year: lift the ban on HIV-positive donors. A controversial move, yes, but some federal health officials and other experts think it's a good idea, the New York Times reports. HIV-positive organs would primarily be given to HIV-positive donors, and "every HIV-infected one we use is a new organ that takes one more person off the list," the doctor says.


Even for HIV-positive recipients, however, there are concerns. "You could have a donor who has a tougher strain of HIV," says one HIV-positive man who will likely need a liver transplant. But doctors say such risks are manageable if the sickest donors and recipients are screened out. South Africa, the only country known to be conducting such transplants, has seen success. In the US, doctors are looking to start with clinical trials and other research. Some experts believe even HIV-negative patients could potentially receive HIV-positive organs, if their risk of liver or kidney failure outweighs the risk of contracting HIV.

Gay British Men Can Donate Blood, With One Catch...

In Britain, gay men will be allowed to donate blood for the first time, with just one catch: They can only donate if they haven’t had sex with another man in a decade. It was determined that the ban on gay men donating blood could be discriminatory, and the public health minister is expected to announce that it will be lifted within weeks. But homosexual men who have been sexually active within the past 10 years will still be barred from donating, the Telegraph reports.


While donated blood is screened for STDs including HIV, some infections are missed since there can be a lag before such illnesses present themselves. An advisory committee concluded that risk would go up only minimally if the current ban was replaced with a new rule: If gay men were prevented from donating until five years after having sex with another man, the risk would go up by less than 5%. By raising the period from five years to 10 years, that risk was halved. Currently, around 7% of sexually active gay men in Britain are believed to donate blood in spite of the ban.

Flying Solo—A Video Review Of Broadway Bares: Solo Strips

Broadway Bares: Solo Strips (please donate to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS) at Splash was on Sunday, April 3, More at Boy Culture..
Keep reading to see videos from chorus-boy knock-outs including Matt Skrincosky, Tony Guerrero, Dave August, Rickey Tripp, Tyrone A. Jackson, Andy Mills, Charlie Sutton, Kellen Stancil and Brandon Rubendall.

Texas House budget includes anti-gay measure, leaves out needed funds for AIDS drug program!

The Texas House approved a budget Sunday that includes massive cuts to public education, Medicaid and, well, just about everything else. The House budget, which now goes to the Senate, would trim $23 billion from current state and federal spending over the next two years. Democrats in the House, who are outnumbered 2-to-1, say the cuts will have disastrous effects on key services, reports Dallas Voice.

As we noted the other day, the House budget includes an amendment that would require public colleges and universities in Texas with LGBT resource centers to spend an equal amount, dollar for dollar, on centers promoting “traditional and family values.” The amdendment from Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, passed by a margin of 110-24.

IOM Calls for More Federal Funding of LGBT Health Research

Dr. Harvey Makadon,

In a landmark moment for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, the Institute of Medicine today published a report for the National Insitutes of Health emphasizing the need for more federally funded research on LGBT health problems, ABC News Reports.


When Elle Groves, 24, was still in school at Colorado State University, a doctor treating her at the campus health services insisted that she was not susceptible to contracting a sexually transmitted disease because she was a lesbian. "Actually, quite the opposite is true. ... The education and awareness about using protection for same-sex female partners is very low and a lot of LGBT women out there don't know that they can still get STDs from unprotected sex with a female partner," says Groves.

"It's been a neglected area of health care research, because people don't think of LGBTs as having health issues different from the general population, and because the government wasn't supportive of research in this area," says Dr. Harvey Makadon, director of professional education at the Fenway Institute and member of the committee that published the IOM report.

Transplant patient got AIDS from new kidney!

A transplant patient contracted AIDS from the kidney of a living donor, in the first documented case of its kind in the U.S. since screening for HIV began in the mid-1980s.

It turns out the donor had unprotected gay sex in the 11 weeks between the time he tested negative and the time the surgery took place in 2009.

In a report Thursday on the New York City case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that organ donors have repeat HIV tests a week before surgery.

“The most sensitive test needs to be done as close as possible to the time of transplant,” said Dr. Colin Shepard, who oversees tracking of HIV cases for the New York City Health Department.

The CDC also said would-be organ donors should be told to avoid behavior that can increase their chances of infection.

Are Gay Men Losing the Ability to Socialize?

Decades ago when the AIDS crisis was devastating San Francisco’s gay community, a group of friends gathered in a local living room to watch the Academy Awards. Frivolity was on TV, but death lurked outside the home, so they decided to pass the hat to raise money to try to do whatever they could to fight the plague.

From that small social gathering came the Academy of Friends, a non-profit group that throws an Oscar Night gala each year that has raised more than $8.5 million in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

That a social gathering turned into a social group with a greater social purpose is such a San Francisco story – the Academy is just one example of this happening in the LGBT community. Causes like same-sex marriage, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the battle to end discrimination have all received funding from social groups.

But with the rise of online social networks, many social groups are in decline. How that trend is impacting the gay community is the subject of Scott James' latest column in Bay Citzen.

News Flash: Anthony Weiner, Senators Call for End to Ban on Gay Men Donating Blood

According to the Village Voice:

Saturday, Anthony Weiner joined 18 Senators who sent an open letter to the FDA this week demanding that the "medically and scientifically unwarranted" lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men be done away with.

Weiner said that overturning the ban, which was put in place in 1983, would save lives in the face of a dangerously low local blood supply. According to the New York Blood Center, 1,500 expected donations of blood and platelets were lost when the recent snowstorms forced the cancellation of school and workplace blood drives.

The Senators who wrote to the FDA pointed out that the lifetime ban on donations from men who have had a single same-sex partner since 1977 is not supported by the currently available science.

The American Red Cross, America's Blood Centers, and AABB reported before an FDA-sponsored workshop on March 9, 2006 that the ban on men who have had sex with other men (MSM), even once, since 1977 from ever donating blood "is medically and scientifically unwarranted." Then in 2008, the Council on Science and Public Health at the American Medical Association also advocated modifying the lifetime deferral requirement for MSM...
Collecting facilities now screen all donors for history of certain high-risk behaviors, and FDA regulations determine that all donated blood be analyzed by two highly accurate screening tests; one for antibodies to HIV-1/2 and HIV-1 Group O variants, and the other for the actual sequences of the virus using molecular technologies. As a result, the blood banking community believes that the lifetime deferral is no longer necessary to protect the integrity of the blood banks.

The letter was also signed by Democrats Dick Durbin, Daniel Akaka, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey, Russ Feingold, Mark Udall, Al Franken, Maria Cantwell, Carl Levin, Tom Harkin, Mark Begich, Rolland Burris, and Michael Bennet, as well as Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders.