Young black gay men who hide sexuality may be behind Brooklyn's HIV epidemic, doctors say

'We are seeing more young men,' says AIDS doctor who has treated boys as young as 14.

BY SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A new generation of young Brooklyn black males, many hiding their sexual identity, is worrying doctors who say they are fueling the borough’s HIV epidemic.

HIV cases among men under 30 who sleep with men rose from 232 in 2001 to 491 in 2011. 

“We are seeing more young men,” said Dr. Yusef Afacan, director of the AIDS Center Program at Woodull Medical Center in East Williamsburg. Afacan said he has even treated boys as young as 14 who contracted HIV after sleeping with another male.

500% disparity between blacks and whites testing "positive" for HIV 

“We never saw that a decade ago,” Afacan said. “Young gay men are not using protection.”

Men who have sex with men, or MSMs, include males who identify as gay and also those who hide their sexual preferences for other men.

Doctors believe these men are infecting their black female partners, who made up 79% of all new HIV cases among Brooklyn women in 2011 .

Hoping to stem the disturbing trend, advocates are zeroing in on central Brooklyn neighborhoods, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Williamsburg, Bushwick and East Flatbush, which are home to the city’s largest group of those living with the disease.

More than 15,000 reside in central Brooklyn, where about 3,600 identify as MSMs. Those 15,000 make up 10% of the citywide HIV/AIDS cases.

The Brooklyn AIDS Task Force opened a small store-front office called Brooklyn Men Konnect on Utica Ave. in Crown Heights, which reputedly has some strong anti-gay attitudes.

Workers troll gay dating sites posing as singles who give graphic intimate advice and push the message of practicing safe hookups.

“It’s too much casual sex. People don’t care. They are not wrapping it up,” said Steven Holmes, 23, a Konnect volunteer who was born with HIV after getting it from his drug-addicted mother. “They aren’t using condoms. They are being reckless.”

“Our lifestyle is taboo,” said a 22-year-old Bed-Stuy man who contracted HIV at 17. He had been struggling with his sexuality and didn't ask his partner to use a condom. “The first time I got a STD,  it was HIV.”

Doctors are complaining that Brooklyn's federal aid for young HIV/AIDS patients has dropped from $2 million a year to $350,000.

“Brooklyn is getting screwed,” said Dr. Jeffrey Birnbaum, head of the SUNY Downstate’s Family, Adolescent and Children's Experience program, which had to let go 26 staffers across the county, including three doctors, because of the cuts.

“These issues need to be dealt with.”

simonew@nydailynews.com

Read more: 

Black gay men run higher risk of HIV infection despite fewer partners

by Terry Michael

From the same 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (Atlanta, March 2013) that gave us the "HIV" baby "cure," we get another attempt to explain-away the exponential difference of "HIV positive" rates between African Americans and Caucasians (7x for black males, 20x for back females, according to the CDC.)

500% disparity between blacks and whites testing "positive" for HIV

If it's a sexually and intravenously transmitted pathogen, there's a word for those 7x and 20x claims, including the "HIV heterosexual pandemic" in Africa, and it's racism.  South Africa's former President Thabo Mbeki recognized the hallucinations of white medicine men about the sexual practices of dark-skinned people. Latter-day "bearers of the white man's burden" exported to deepest, darkest Africa both the "origin of HIV" (transferred to gay white males in Greenwich Village via black-skinned people in Haiti, of course) and the "HIV epidemic" that never occurred in the white heterosexual West.

Magic Johnson Partners With OraSure on HIV Awareness Campaign

(The Root) -- "No, I'm not on any magical drugs. I've been saying that for 21 years," Magic Johnson told a small crowd of journalists and HIV- and AIDS-prevention workers over lunch at New York City's Gramercy Park Hotel on Wednesday.

The NBA champion and star of the Los Angeles Lakers, after receiving the life-changing news that he was HIV-positive, announced his status to a gaggle of television cameras in 1991. Since then he has worked to change the way the world perceives people who carry the virus.

OraSure CEO Douglas Michels on the company’s partnership with Magic Johnson and its new rapid HIV test that is now available for in-home use. 

OraSure Technologies Inc. (OSUR) Stock: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=OSUR

Ask for the Kit insert before your next HIV and AIDS test.

READ: In Home HIV Tests Now Available to Mislead http://bit.ly/Q8olNQ

But initially, Johnson had to seek someone to guide him through the process of dealing with his disease, both emotionally and physically. Now he is an international ambassador for HIV and AIDS prevention, the self-proclaimed "face of this disease," and he's endorsing the at-home HIV test called OraQuick.

Produced by the pharmaceutical company OraSure, the test is the first FDA-approved rapid HIV test, which produces results in 20 minutes. It retails at pharmacies like CVS or Duane Reade, as well as online for about $39. OraQuick, which has been used by health care providers for just over a decade, uses a mouth swab to detect antibodies to HIV-1 and HIV-2 in oral fluid. And while this seems to be great news for people who would rather learn their status in their own bathroom, according to the Food and Drug Administration, the test does come with a caveat.

500% disparity between blacks and whites testing "positive" for HIV - Terry Michael

 June 14, 2011

500% Black-White HIV+ Disparity Belies "3% Epidemic" in Washington

Anomalies from 30-year-old AIDS theory

by Terry Michael

A recent report from an observational study of sexual behavior of 35 gay and bi-sexual African American males is the latest attempt to explain away the huge 500% disparity between blacks and whites testing "positive" for HIV, a difference so great it belies the oft-repeated claim of a "3% generalized and severe epidemic" of "HIV-AIDS" in the heavily black District of Columbia. That unexplainable disproportion raises serious questions, lingering for the past quarter century, about the single pathogen theory of the immune deficiency syndrome first observed by the CDC 30 years ago this month, when the Centers for Disease Control, in a June 5, 1981 surveillance report, noticed curious cases of pneumonia in five gay men in Los Angeles.