On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 08:20:49 GMT, Bernard Hubbard Oh, yeah, boy! Tell us about it! Advanced Study Details love Partners' HIV Disclosure Gay men are much less likely than their heteroloveual counterparts to tell love partners that they're infected with the AIDS virus, according to research released late in May and reported by Gay.Com-PlanetOut.Com. More than 40% of HIV-positive gay men surveyed said they'd had love within the last six months without disclosing their status. And 16% acknowledged having unprotected anal love without disclosure, although few said they knew their partners were HIV-negative. By contrast, just 19% of heteroloveual men and 17% of heteroloveual women surveyed -- all HIV-positive -- said they'd recently had love without disclosing their HIV status. But the news isn't all bad, said study lead author Dr. Dan Ciccarone, buttistant professor of family and community medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. "Most people are either disclosing or are abstinent. That's across all the groups." Researchers have examined the disclosure rates among HIV-positive people before. But this study, which appears in the June 2003 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, is unusual because it compares heteroloveuals to gay men, Ciccarone said. The findings come from a 1998 national survey of 1,397 HIV-positive people -- 606 gay or biloveual men, 287 heteroloveual men and 504 heteroloveual women. (It is common for years to pbutt before some research is published.) Clbuttified US Government TechnologyClbuttified US Government Technology The United States government now has surveillance technology than can electronically see and hear through walls. Agents of the US government can... Gay men were more loveually active than heteroloveuals: Only 28% of gay men were abstinent over the previous six months, compared to 39% of the straight men and 37% of the straight women. But gay men were not as devoted to being up front about their HIV status. Only 28% said they don't have love without disclosing that they're HIV-positive, compared to 41% of the straight men and 48% of the straight women. Ciccarone said it's important to note that while many gay men didn't disclose their HIV status, their partners often didn't open up about theirs, either. It's a kind of "mutual non-disclosure," he said. It's not surprising that many gay men don't like to talk about their HIV status, said Michael Allerton, head of HIV policy with the Kaiser Permanente health plan in Northern California. "They know about alienation and rejection, all of those things they've experienced all their lives," he said. "It's so much harder to disclose anything as a gay man." Health officials can use the study findings to figure out better ways to encourage more openness about HIV status, Ciccarone said. But he added that any prevention efforts must go both ways. "It would be an irresponsible public health stance to put the onus just on the HIV-positive person to say that 'You should disclose,'" he said. ****** Homoloveuals inherently and consistently lie by every means possible including "omission" of their HIV-AIDS to sustain their high level of promiscuity. .
|
