CDC: risk of HIV 150 times greater for gay men than for heterosexual men

MercatorNet reports on the latest HIV-related numbers from the United States government’s Center for Disease Control.

Excerpt:

Recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on HIV infection in the United States reveal some disturbing trends concerning gay males or, in CDC terminology, “men who have sex with men” (MSM). In recent data the CDC estimated that 61 percent of the 48,079 HIV infections diagnosed in 2010 occurred through male to male sexual contact.(1) According to the CDC data, sexual contact and injection drug use are the predominant means by which HIV is transmitted.

The CDC data on HIV diagnoses came from forty-six states and five U.S. dependent areas. Some 29,194 new HIV diagnoses in 2010 were linked to male homosexual contact where no injection drug use took place. There were approximately 4550 HIV male diagnoses linked to heterosexual contact. Injection drug use was involved in 5481 cases. Women contracting the HIV virus through heterosexual contact accounted for approximately 8,800 cases. Another 47 HIV cases came from sources other than the four listed. Included in the other 47 cases were blood transfusions and prenatal exposure.(2) When CDC statistics are analyzed using the estimate of the MSM population at 4 percent of the American male population and assuming the other 96 percent who do not have sex with men are heterosexual, the risk of HIV infection from sexual contact for MSM was approximately 150 times greater than the heterosexual male population in 2010.(3)

To put the HIV risk for MSM into perspective a comparison with the health risks of smoking can be made. Smoking tobacco is a causative factor of many types of cancer, the most common being lung cancer. According to the CDC the risk of lung cancer for men who smoke is 23 times greater than for men who do not smoke. For women who smoke the risk is 13 times greater than for women who do not. Those who smoke are also 2 to 4 times more likely to suffer coronary heart disease and 2 to 4 times more likely to suffer a stroke.(4)

[...]Similar to smoking, homosexual behavior has other unhealthy side effects. The CDC stated that the rate of primary and secondary syphilis among MSM is “more than 46 times that of other men and more than 71 times that of women.”(8) Studies have shown that MSM are at higher risk of alcohol and drug abuse, anxiety, major depression, and thoughts of suicide.(9)

The footnotes in the MercatorNet article either go directly back to the CDC web site, or in some cases to peer-reviewed published research.

CDC numbers were also recently reported in the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

Teens and young adults now account for more than a quarter of the new cases of HIV identified in the United States annually, and a clear majority of those cases involve young gay or bisexual men, the federal government said in a major new survey Tuesday.

Of the nearly 48,000 new HIV cases identified in the United States in 2010, the latest year for which complete data are available, more than 12,000 involved teens and young adults, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found in its latest report.

About 72 percent of these new HIV cases in younger adults occurred in young men who are gay or bisexual, according to the CDC report.

[...]According to the CDC figures, black youths accounted for the largest share of new HIV cases, with Hispanic youths and white youths accounting for about 20 percent each.

About 1.1 million people are estimated to be living with HIV in the United States. Some 47,129 new HIV cases were identified in 2010.

The CDC’s new report, “Vital Signs: HIV Infection, Testing, Risk Behaviors Among Youths, United States,” estimated that youths aged 13 to 24 accounted for 12,200, or 26 percent, of new HIV infections in 2010.

Of these new cases, 7,000 were among black youths, 2,390 were among Hispanics, and 2,380 were among whites.

About 8,800 cases were attributed to male-to-male sexual contact.

HIV/AIDS is incurable, and an estimated 17,774 people with AIDS died in 2009. Some 619,000 persons have died of AIDS in the United States since the epidemic began in the early 1980s, according to the CDC.

If you really love a person, you don’t hide the risks of certain activities from them. You tell them the truth about the risks, so that they have all the information they need when making decisions. I wouldn’t let any of my friends smoke cigarettes without getting a stern warning, supported by evidence. Somehow, we’ve redefined love to mean approving of whatever people want to do, regardless of risks. Why is that a good thing? Telling people the truth about what they doing are should never be viewed as “intolerant”.

Filed under: News, AIDS, CDC, Disease, Gay, Gay Activism, Gay Rights, GLBT, Health, Health-care, HIV, Homosexuality, LGBT, Promiscuity, Sex Education, Sickness, STD, STI

CDC report: Youths make up 1 in 4 new HIV cases

From the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

Teens and young adults now account for more than a quarter of the new cases of HIV identified in the United States annually, and a clear majority of those cases involve young gay or bisexual men, the federal government said in a major new survey Tuesday.

Of the nearly 48,000 new HIV cases identified in the United States in 2010, the latest year for which complete data are available, more than 12,000 involved teens and young adults, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found in its latest report.

About 72 percent of these new HIV cases in younger adults occurred in young men who are gay or bisexual, according to the CDC report.

[...]According to the CDC figures, black youths accounted for the largest share of new HIV cases, with Hispanic youths and white youths accounting for about 20 percent each.

About 1.1 million people are estimated to be living with HIV in the United States. Some 47,129 new HIV cases were identified in 2010.

The CDC’s new report, “Vital Signs: HIV Infection, Testing, Risk Behaviors Among Youths, United States,” estimated that youths aged 13 to 24 accounted for 12,200, or 26 percent, of new HIV infections in 2010.

Of these new cases, 7,000 were among black youths, 2,390 were among Hispanics, and 2,380 were among whites.

About 8,800 cases were attributed to male-to-male sexual contact.

HIV/AIDS is incurable, and an estimated 17,774 people with AIDS died in 2009. Some 619,000 persons have died of AIDS in the United States since the epidemic began in the early 1980s, according to the CDC.

Numbers like this should cause us to reconsider whether we should be encouraging behaviors that cause widespread disease and enormous health care costs. All we have to do is tell the truth – some things are morally wrong, and people should choose not do them. If they choose to do them anyway, let them pay the costs of their own decisions themselves. Why does government need to get involved to pay for some people’s choices, and not others? If people want to make poor choices, let them do it. But let’s not celebrate it or encourage it. Let’s not pay for it, because that just means we’ll get more of it.

Filed under: News, AIDS, CDC, Disease, Gay, Gay Activism, Gay Rights, GLBT, Health, Health-care, HIV, Homosexuality, LGBT, Promiscuity, Sex Education, Sickness, STD, STI

New study: HIV infection rate higher for those having male/male sex

From Reuters.

Excerpt:

According to the estimates, published in the journal PLoS ONE, 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. Over the four-year period, that amounts to an average of 50,000 cases per year.

[...]Men who have sex with men – which includes openly gay and bisexual men and those who do not identify themselves as gay or bisexual – remain most heavily affected.While this group represents 2 percent of the overall U.S. population, they accounted for 61 percent of all new HIV infections in 2009.

And young men who have sex with men – those aged 13 to 29 – are the hardest hit, accounting for more than one quarter of all new HIV infections nationally.

New HIV infections affected young men who have sex with men of all races, but the CDC saw very sharp increases among young black men who have sex with men.

“We saw increases of up to 48 percent – nearly a 50 percent increase between 2006 and 2009,” Fenton said.

Is it a good idea to celebrate behaviors that are likely to cause harm? Is it a good idea to conceal the risks of certain behaviors from the general public? Aren’t people who set boundaries between harmless and harmful behavior more loving than people who deny that any behaviors are more or less harmful?

Comments to this post will be filtered because of the Obama administration law restricting speech on these topics.

Filed under: News, AIDS, Bisexual, Bisexuality, CDC, Celebrate Diversity, Disease, Epidemic, Gay, Harm, Harmless, Health, Health-care, HIV, Homosexual, Homosexuality, Male, Men, Political Correctness, Research, Study

New CDC report finds that virginity is on the rise in America

From Maggie Gallagher at Real Clear Politics. (H/T Ruth Blog)

Excerpt:

Shocking news: Virginity is on the rise in America.

The source is sober, academic, practically irrefutable: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Its latest analysis of the sex lives of Americans age 15 to 44 includes a startling finding: Virginity is increasing among teens and young adults in the U.S.

Compared with data from the 2002 (National Survey of Family Growth), a higher percentage of males and females 15-24 in 2006-2008 have had no sexual contact with another person. In 2002, 22 percent of young men and women 15-24 had never had any sexual contact with another person, and in 2006-2008, those figures were 27 percent for males and 29 percent for females.

The survey was was drawn from in-person interviews with a national sample of 13,495 males and females. The data were collected using audio computer-assisted self-interviewing, or ACASI, in which the respondent enters his or her own answers into the computer — known to be the most accurate way of collecting sensitive data.

The response rate for the 2006-2008 NSFG was 75 percent — very high for this kind of data.

The increase in virginity is not just “technical virginity,” mind you. These are young adults who say they have had no sexual contact of any kind: no intercourse, no oral sex, no anal sex. (Presumably, a lot of them have, however, kissed and hugged!)

I’m an old hand at stats. But even I was surprised by this finding buried in the report (Table 3): 32 percent of currently married women under the age of 45 say they have had only one sex partner in their life.

Slightly more than 50 million Americans are married. If the figures for those under 45 mirror the national figures (a conservative assumption), that means the number of women who have never had sex with anyone but their husbands is at least 8 million.

I’m one of the virgins who doesn’t kiss, although I might hug, if the person could pass all of my grueling tests and requirements.

Related posts

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• Where have all the good men gone, and why aren’t men marrying?
• Do men have a responsibility not to marry feminists?
• What does the common practice of withholding sex reveal about women?
• Why are so many British feminists converting to Islam?
• Why do some women tolerate jerks as boyfriends?
• Why do women flock to movies like Switch and Eat, Pray, Love?
• Women should read “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands”
• Arlemagne’s post on the dangers of sentimentality in relationships
• Is Mark Driscoll afraid to hold a woman accountable for her own choices?
• 12-year-old girl (and her mother) sues father for grounding her… and wins!
• The Wintery Knight’s greatest fears about the future
• How feminism made women unsuitable for marriage and parenting
• Does being a virgin before marriage affect marital stability?
• How to communicate requirements to a Christian woman during courtship
• How feminism made women unsuitable for marriage and parenting
• Why men should refuse a woman’s offer of casual sex
• How Christian women can make Christian men marry without using sex appeal
• John Piper’s questions to ask before you get married
• Does a man’s decision to marry negatively impact his service to God?
• The rules for friendship and courtship between Christians
• What Christian men want from Christian women… in paintings!
• Why Christian men should be chaste
• Should Christians marry non-Christians?

Filed under: News, CDC, Centers for Disease Control, Chaste, Chastity, Courting, Dating, Female, Male, Marriage, Men, Research, Sex, Sexuality, STD, Virgin, Viriginity, Women

Why didn’t the media cover the new CDC study on HIV transmission?

Here’s the Center for Disease Control press release.

Excerpt:

A data analysis released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention underscores the disproportionate impact of HIV and syphilis among gay and bisexual men in the United States.

The data, presented at CDC’s 2010 National STD Prevention Conference, finds that the rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) is more than 44 times that of other men and more than 40 times that of women.

The range was 522-989 cases of new HIV diagnoses per 100,000 MSM vs. 12 per 100,000 other men and 13 per 100,000 women.

The rate of primary and secondary syphilis among MSM is more than 46 times that of other men and more than 71 times that of women, the analysis says. The range was 91-173 cases per 100,000 MSM vs. 2 per 100,000 other men and 1 per 100,000 women.

While CDC data have shown for several years that gay and bisexual men make up the majority of new HIV and new syphilis infections, CDC has estimated the rates of these diseases for the first time based on new estimates of the size of the U.S. population of MSM. Because disease rates account for differences in the size of populations being compared, rates provide a reliable method for assessing health disparities between populations.

I noticed an analysis by Marcia Segelstein of why these numbers are not communicated more widely here. (H/T RuthBlog)

She writes:

In an effort to look at these figures from a purely scientific and public health perspective, let’s substitute smoking and cancer for homosexual sex and HIV.  If the CDC released information which made a direct correlation between smoking and extremely high rates of getting cancer, people would take notice.  The media would write about it.  Public health organizations would make sure the news was spread.  Campaigns would be launched to save lives by discouraging smoking.  Public funds would be spent to deter people from engaging in such dangerous behavior.  Schools would teach children about the dangers of smoking.

Of course, as we all know, that scenario is real.  Because of the now-known dangers of smoking, a warning from the Surgeon General appears on every pack of cigarettes.  Public service ads saturated the airwaves over a period of years discouraging smoking.  The dangers of smoking are a standard part of most health classes in schools.

I really recommend that everyone who is concerned about this issue read Jeffrey Satinover’s “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth“, which talks about the health risks of certain behaviors. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover has practiced psychoanalysis and psychiatry for more than nineteen years. He is a former Fellow in Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry at Yale University and a past president of the C. G. Jung Foundations. He holds degrees from MIT, the University of Texas, the Harvard University. If you want to change your mind – and your will – on a topic, you study that topic by looking at the evidence from the experts in the field. Dr. Satinover’s book is compassionate and measured. It is a great place to start learning.

No one is trying to make anyone else feel bad by telling them the truth. On the contrary – by telling people the truth and by setting appropriate boundaries, we can protect others from harm. And that’s why everyone needs to be told the truth. We aren’t helping people by hiding numbers like these from them. Speak the truth in love, and let people decide for themselves.

Filed under: News, Analysis, Bisexual, CDC, Choices, Costs, Disease, Female, Gay, Health, Health-care, HIV, Impact, Jeffrey Satinover, Male, Media Bias, Medicine, MSM, Narth, Proportion, Rate, Research, Risk, Sex, Study, Syphilis