New HIV strain shakes up New York gay community

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A potentially virulent strain of the HIV virus found last week in a New York man has the gay community worried about a new deadly epidemic, and activists battling a scourge they believed was contained.

The patient found to have a treatment-resistant and fast progressing strain of HIV was a user of crystal methamphetamine - a party drug increasingly popular among some gay men that critics say encourages unprotected sex with multiple partners.

The news sent a shudder through the ranks of AIDS experts who have warned of the potential for disaster among gays using the drug to fuel sex parties that can last for days.

“The meth underground in the gay community is the perfect Petri dish for AIDS transmission,” Peter Staley, a founder of advocacy group ACT-UP, told Reuters on Thursday.

“Politically this is a shot in the arm we needed to get the message out that the meth epidemic in the gay community was on an inevitable course risking the spread of disease.”

Posters on telephone booths in gay neighborhoods proclaim that being crystal free is “Sexy,” and a new round of public service ads funded by the city is in the works.

Community centers are brain-storming over ways to reach out to gay meth-users who advertise for partners on the Internet - where the code “pnp” alerts possible sex partners that one is interested in “party and play,” a euphemism for meth and sex.

Word of the possible new strain, which is still being analyzed, shattered a complacency brought on by advances in treatment that kept AIDS at bay for many in the past decade.

“It’s a poignant reminder that HIV disease is still with us,” said Dr. Jack Dehovitz, director of the HIV Center at the University Hospital of Brooklyn. “In the treatment era since 1996, people haven’t really been thinking about HIV as much. People are living productive lives.”

Patrick McGovern, head of Harlem United Community AIDS Center, described the attitude as “prevention fatigue.”

“There definitely is a complacency and a kind of prevention fatigue even in some of the older folks who have seen loss of friends and relatives,” said McGovern.

“God, let’s hope there’s another way to deal with prevention fatigue than the loss of thousands of lives.”

McGovern has already joined with Dr Barbara Warren, director of organizational development planning and research for the lesbian and gay center in Greenwich Village to begin planning community forums to discuss the dangers.

“There’s a lot of buzz,” said Warren. “I think we really need to move forward and call for a community dialogue.”

A generation gap is also a factor. Younger gay men are seen as more inclined to risky behavior and unprotected sex, not having experienced the initial horror of the AIDS epidemic.

“There is still a fair amount of barebacking in the gay community,” said Staley, referring to anal sex without a condom. “There is a generational divide here. In the ‘80s all of us started wearing condoms. The reason was we saw our friends dying all around us. Now we have a generation that don’t associate HIV with death.”

McGovern, whose Harlem center is studying how to use Internet sex sites to reach out and educate gay meth users, said it was important not to demonize meth users for fear of causing them to go underground.

Staley and Warren agreed.

“We should not chastise, punish and alienate them,” said Warren. “Being punitive, militant is not necessarily the best approach. It’s better to reach out to folks and engage them.”

Said Staley: “What we really need to do in the gay community is to have a conversation among ourselves whether we want this in our community or not. Social pressure will determine whether this drug will stay popular or not.”

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