Controversial and longtime SF AIDS activist Michael Petrelis has just posted this video from a recent meeting of the San Francisco Dept of Public Health's HIV Prevention Planning Council below on his blog. Petrelis, despite his long history of being a real douchebag (see any number of accounts on this - even in Urvashi Vaid's book, "Virtual Equality"), makes a few decent points. I actually really debated whether to even cite this video, because it draws attention to him, but I think the video provides some insight into the issues / emotions at hand.

I haven't yet blogged about these matters, because - well - plenty of voices have already chimed in on the topic. There are two issues here. The most significant here is the recent alleged "outbreak" of treatment-resistant staph infections in San Francisco which have been hyped up in the media in part due to institutions like UCSF and other gay community-based AIDS organizations.

Now, it's not to say that these infections have not indeed occurred. But, well, like my friend Chris Bartlett remarked to me last weekend, it seems like at least twice a year health organizations have to come out and scare the shit out of gay men. I only need to draw your attention to the ridiculous media frenzy over the alleged "superinfection" case in New York City that was blown way out of proportion in 2005. That patient, of course, is now responding to treatment.

Similarly, a few staph cases among gay men has been disgustingly overhyped in media reports. Any potential link between gay sex and disease is readily eaten up and spat out by media outlets who love to remind us of the danger that is always lurking around the corner in our sex lives. Take this ABC news story from just a few weeks ago. And I quote:

Flesh-eating bacteria. A drug-resistant menace, spreading silently through hospital hallways.

If one were asked to come up with a recipe for a panic-inducing disease, it would be hard to come up with something more horrifying than methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- or MRSA.

But even as new research suggests that the disease may be spreading though the homosexual community -- and could even be developing into a full-blown epidemic -- health experts studying MRSA say panic over the disease may be premature.

Even though they're reporting here that perhaps the panic might be premature, the damage is already done. The title of the article "The Great MRSA Epidemic: Is It Time to Worry?" and its opening line ("Flesh-eating bacteria") does all the talking. The title in fact matter-of-factly states that there is indeed an epidemic already, and just asks us to consider whether we might want to start taking action.

And then of course a few lines down they again repeat that "the disease may be spreading though the homosexual community," despite the fact that deaths due to MRSA are primarily among other groups (elderly, hospital patients, etc). This isn't another gay epidemic! Puh-lease. When a few hundred black folks in South Carolina come down with the flu, we don't suddenly see press releases about a potentially dangerous Black flu epidemic.

Give the media any fodder to remind America of the intrinsic link between gay sex and disease, and they lap it up. Researchers and institutions have got to start being much more careful and considerate in the way they disseminate new, *preliminary* data on gay men's health. Recklessly throwing it out to the public is something like throwing a kitten to a pack of wolves. They will chew it up, mangle it into something unrecognizable, and spit it right back out. This isn't news, for God's sake! We've seen this time and time again - and yet here we are again, in another situation where the media is doing disgusting violence against gay men's communities -- often times with the full support of AIDS organizations. Shameful.

The second issue at hand here is the recent release of a Swiss study that argues that HIV-positive people on HAART (highly active anti-retroviral therapy) with undetectable viral loads cannot sexually transmit the virus to their partners. This isn't news to many of us -- the Swiss study wasn't, after all, original research. It was instead a review of already existing literature, some of which has been around for years now. You can find the study here in French and now a rough English translation here.

SF's DPH and the SF AIDS Foundation issued a joint statement saying that they "do not endorse" the Swiss Study. Well of course they don't! I mean, I hate to break it to everyone, but as a sociologist things couldn't be more clear: AIDS organizations have an interest in promoting panic and suppressing evidence of good news. It's how they get their money. This is not a revolutionary statement. It's the name of organizational / institutional politics - and part of the growing pains associated with community organizations being swallowed up by government agencies / funding priorities. You want CDC money? Show us a crisis - and follow our rules. Health departments and CDC-funded agencies everywhere happily oblige. They want to keep their jobs, after all. It's fucked up - but it's the name of the game, folks!

Now this isn't to say that the Swiss study is conclusive evidence. It's not. And we should all acknowledge that. And I certainly appreciate the tricky situation that agencies are in when confronted with this kind of data. How do you promote data that can be easily misinterpreted, thus leading to potential new infections? I don't have the answers here.

But I do know that there is plenty of data on HIV transmision out there that is kept out of gay men's hands, I presume because they think we're not capable of making informed decisions about our sex lives. But if the home-grown trends in seroadaptation in San Francisco and other urban center teach us anything, it's that gay men are quite ingenious in developing innovative approaches to prevention - without the help of prevention organizations. Which is a good thing, since our organizations often times don't do much to help us out in that regard.

Phew. I admit this post is a bit reactionary - but I had to get some steam out! So, without further adieu, here's that Petrelis video I mentioned at the beginning: