CDC Releases New Data on HIV Infections 2006-2009

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released their latest analysis of HIV infections from 2006-2009 today. The full report (pdf) is available online. This is the first time the CDC has been able to estimate HIV infections from actual HIV test data, thanks to the passage of HIV names reporting legislation which has been enacted by several states (including California) in recent years. 2009 is the most recent year for which data is available so far.

A key excerpt from the press release:

According to the new estimates, there were 48,600 new HIV infections in the United States in 2006, 56,000 in 2007, 47,800 in 2008 and 48,100 in 2009.  The multi-year incidence estimates allow for a reliable examination of trends over time.  They reveal no statistically significant change in HIV incidence overall from 2006 to 2009, with an average of 50,000 for the four-year period.  In 2009, the largest number of new infections was among white MSM (11,400), followed closely by black MSM (10,800).  Hispanic MSM (6,000) and black women (5,400) were also heavily affected.   

“While we’re encouraged that prevention efforts have helped avoid overall increases in HIV infections in the United States, and have significantly reduced new infections from the peak in the mid-1980s, we have plateaued at an unacceptably high level,” said Kevin Fenton, M.D., director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention.  “Without intensified HIV prevention efforts, we are likely to face an era of rising infection rates and higher health care costs for a preventable condition that already affects more than one million people in this country.”

Some of the key take-aways from the report are:

• Overall HIV incidence in the U.S. has been relatively stable, with approximately 50,000 annual new infections

• New infections among young men who have sex with men (MSM) increased 34% between 2006 and 1009

• Young, black MSM (aged 13-29) is the only subpopulation in the U.S. to experience a statistically significant increase from 2006 through 2009
• New HIV infections increased 48% – from 4,400 in 2006 to 6,500 in 2009

• The new data confirm that HIV continues to disproportionately affect MSM of all races/ethnicities
• MSM represent 2% of the total U.S. population, but accounted for 61% all new HIV infections in 2009
• Among MSM in 2009, white MSM represented the greatest number of new HIV infections (11,400), followed closely by black MSM (10,800) and Hispanic MSM (6,000)
  

Read that line again: "MSM represent 2% of the total U.S. population, but accounted for 61% all new HIV infections in 2009." People who says HIV/AIDS is not a "gay" issue don't know what the heck they are talking about!

Black Man Perceived To Be Gay Barred From Donating Blood

Aaron Pace, a self-described effeminate straight man, was prevented from
donating blood due to his perceived sexual orientation

I have previously blogged abuut the ban on gay people from donating blood in the United States and have expressed my opinion that the ban should be lifted. The alleged rationale by the Food and Drug Administration is that a man who has had sex with another man even once since 1979 has blood which is riskier than other people's despite the fact all blood that is donated is tested by the American Red Cross for the presence of HIV antibodies and other STDs.

Now a heterosexual man named Aaron Pace, who happens to be Black and describes himself as "effeminate," has been prevented from donating blood in Gary, Indiana.

The story was first published in the Chicago Sun-Times:

“I was humiliated and embarrassed,” said Pace, 22. of Gary. “It’s not right that homeless people can give blood but homosexuals can’t. And I’m not even a homosexual.”

Pace visited Bio-Blood Components Inc. in Gary, which pays for blood and plasma donations, up to $40 a visit. But during the interview screening process, Pace said he was told he could not be a blood donor there because he “appears to be a homosexual.”

No one at Bio-Blood returned calls seeking comment, but donation centers like it, and even the American Red Cross, are still citing a nearly 30-year-old federal policy to turn away gay men from donating.

The Food and Drug Administration policy, implemented in 1983, states that men who have had sex — even once — with another man (since 1977) are not allowed to donate blood.

The policy was sparked by concerns that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was tainting the blood supply. And, back then, screening tests to identify HIV-positive blood had not yet been developed.

Today, all donated blood is tested for HIV, as well as for hepatitis B and C, syphilis and other infectious diseases, before it can be released to hospitals. This is why gay activists, blood centers including the American Red Cross, and even some lawmakers now claim the lifetime ban is “medically and scientifically unwarranted.”

I should repeat what the Los Angeles Times said last year in an editorial that "there were 4 known cases of HIV transmission out of 122 million units of blood donated between 1999 and 2007." Is that infinitesimal risk worth the discrimination against all gay men in the light of a nationwide blood shortage?

I wonder if Marcus Bachmann would be allowed to give blood at Bio-Blood?

Today is 30th Anniversary of AIDS

This weekend is the 30th anniversary of the discovery of what became known as AIDS in Los Angeles, CA in June 1981. The Black AIDS Institute says "30 years is enuf!"

Ha/tip to LGBTPOV

VERMONT: Democrats Enact Single-Payer Health Care!

Peter Shumlin is the Democratic Governor of Vermont

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, individual states have the opportunity to enact their own health care reform policies which suit each individual state. In Vermont, Democrats control the state legislature and the governorship for the first time in a long time. When Republicans gain legislative control they use their power for evil, in Minnesota (putting an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment on the 2012 ballot), in Wisconsin and Michigan (to eviscerate unions and disempower working families), in Ohio and Florida (disenfranchise elderly and minority voters) and in South Carolina and Tennessee (legislatively bully LGBT citizens and deny them equal access to constitutional rights).

Democrats, however, use their power for good, like in Vermont where they are ensuring that all state citizens will have access to health care.

Amy Goodman of TruthDig reports:

Vermont hired Harvard economist William Hsiao to come up with three alternatives to the current system. The single-payer system, Hsiao wrote, “will produce savings of 24.3 percent of total health expenditure between 2015 and 2024.” An analysis by Don McCanne, M.D., of Physicians for a National Health Program pointed out that “these plans would cover everyone without any increase in spending since the single payer efficiencies would be enough to pay for those currently uninsured or underinsured. So this is the really good news—single payer works.”

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin explained to me his intention to sign the bill into law: “Here’s our challenge. Our premiums go up 10, 15, 20 percent a year. This is true in the rest of the country as well. They are killing small business. They’re killing middle class Americans, who have been kicked in the teeth over the last several years. What our plan will do is create a single pool, get the insurance company profits, the pharmaceutical company profits, the other folks that are mining the system to make a lot of money on the backs of our illnesses, and ensure that we’re using those dollars to make Vermonters healthy.”

Governor Peter Shumlin did indeed sign the bill into law. 1 state down, 49 to go. California also has a single-payer health care bill pending in the legislature. MadProfessah has endorsed this legislation.

HIV Treatment *IS* HIV Prevention

There's an interesting twist to the news that HIV+ people on anti-retroviral medication have surprisingly low chances of passing the virus on to their sexual partners in this weekend's New York Times column by Charles Blow.

Blow makes the point that the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) has been a victim of both state and federal budget cutting and points out the long-term fiscal irresponsibility of such actions.

According to data from the ADAP Advocacy Association: as of last week, the number of people on ADAP waiting lists had risen to 7,873; between April 2009 and April 2011, 14 states reduced the number and types of drugs they would pay for. A number of states have stiffened financial eligibility requirements, capped enrollment or removed some people already enrolled. Other states are considering doing so.


This is particularly problematic since the National ADAP Monitoring Project’s annual report, released in March, showed that those most dependent on the program are some of society’s most vulnerable. About a third of all people diagnosed with AIDS are enrolled in ADAPs, three-quarters of them had incomes of less than 200 percent of the national poverty level, 61 percent were uninsured, and 55 percent were black or Hispanic.


But as the recession put more patients in need, federal and state aid didn’t keep track. From 2007 to 2010, the number of people using ADAPs jumped by a third, but federal and state funds specifically appropriated for it grew by just 3 percent and 18 percent, respectively.


Not only is it morally reprehensible to restrict or deny life-saving drugs to those who need them (talk about death panels), it is a colossal miscalculation of public health policy, not to mention fiscally irresponsible.


The new findings should help change a paradigm that’s badly in need of changing. Treatment benefits the healthy as well as the sick. It not only prolongs and improves the lives of those who are H.I.V.-positive, but also is a prophylactic for those who aren’t. Everyone wins.


It’s time to expand ADAPs, not diminish them.

It's just amazing how we spend health care dollars in this country. It simply is not rational to be cutting funds for  prevention of any disease, especially when prevention is always cheaper than treatment. In the case of HIV, treatment can also improve prevention of future infections so it should be a no-brainer to increase, not decrease such expenditures. Unless you live in Mississippi, of course.