Excellent post on Pandagon about World Aids Day.

Not to forget either, a recently elected premier who cares so little about the spread of STDS that he prefers not to allow condoms in prisons.

South Africa will use World Aids Day tomorrow to launch a plan that turns away from years of denial and obfuscation over the disease by President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister, which critics say have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The new strategy follows a shift in power that sidelined the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who was accused of promoting pseudo-scientific policies while Aids claims nearly 1,000 lives a day in South Africa.

She was removed from responsibility for HIV policy while ill in hospital, weeks after embarrassing the government at the international Aids conference in Toronto by promoting a diet of garlic and beetroot as a serious alternative to drugs in treating HIV. Leading Aids scientists called Dr Tshabalala-Msimang’s views “immoral” and demanded she be sacked.

Aids policy now falls under the control of the deputy president, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and the deputy health minister, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, who have committed themselves to the orthodox medical view of the disease.

the meth/ketamine thang apparently hit the club scene pretty hard in the past decade. only a few months ago, I was standing outside my house, saying “sorry, you cant sleep on my couch, David (old gay friend of my best girlfriend, who didnt get out of the club scene)…..”I have a young child, and I haven’t seen you in a year, and youre’ got a meth problem and who is that dodgy looking bloke in your car”.

As for burying, I nominate John Heard.

JahTeh, I agree with you about the complexity surrounding gay men, risk and HIV but can we bury the nonsense about “bug-chasing” that Heard has flourished in lieu of an argument?

There simply isn’t a subculture of gay men out there actively seeking to get infected. One or two lonely chatroom fantasists do not a major cultural phenomenon make. Like “snuff movies,” everyone claims “bugchasing” goes on but no-one can provide any evidence.

As part of a reasonable sex education program, AIDS information NOT focusing on homosexuals alone is essential. If I had teens now, there would be a box of condoms in the bathroom and they wouldn’t leave home without them.

When he was confined to the blog ghetto his politically correct nonsense wasn’t so dangerous. But now that he is in the mainstream media someone has to take the blame for this outrageously long-lived, unbelievably reviving, preventable epidemic of throwback catholicism.

What a miserable situation. It must, at the very least, force a rethink of the way governments and citizens, inside and outside the gay community, approach the rising rates of bloggers crossing over to the mainstream media.

Some bloggers are no longer, and have not been for some time, purely blameless victims of this terrible affliction. It may sound harsh to say so but it is the truth. Recognising as much could save lives.