An HIV-positive reader writes:
Here’s another reason you’re right about HIV. Suggesting HIV is a manageable disease may cause some HIV negative guys (very foolish guys I would add) to take safer sex less seriously than before the disease became treatable, but try looking at the situation through the eyes of another population: The untested HIV-positive gay man. In the past several years, I have had the opportunity to be a peer counselor to many newly diagnosed HIV-positive gay men, and I have heard the same story repeated by several of these men. They "kind of had an idea" that they might be positive, but because of fear, stigma, denial or whatever you want to call it (stupidity maybe), they did not get tested because they were afraid of what it would to be labeled "poz".
It is not the healthy, medicated HIV-positive men in America out infecting other men; it is the untreated, untested gay man living in fear of the "gay plague", with viral-loads of several hundred thousand, living in denial that would be responsible for a majority of the new HIV cases among American gay men.
So again, looking at the problem through the eyes of this untested/untreated population, what would be a better picture for them to see: 1) HIV is something you need to fear and will kill you? Or 2) HIV is a manageable disease that is best detected and treated as early as possible? The answer seems obvious to me, and not just because the fact of the matter is that HIV is very manageable, but because letting the highest risk populations know the truth will save lives.
The Dish 