Disgusting depending on your viewpoint

[kendor]

Better order the box then !!

Try Ebay, there's a sale on

 

[AdamW]

I do understand the difference between HIV and AIDS! For a start it is in the name, HIV is a virus, AIDS is a syndrome. The reason I used AIDS rather than HIV was for the very reason you mention: people can live a long time with HIV. AIDS however is more immediately terminal, however whereas a lot of terminal conditions can be easily estimated, AIDS can not. Don't most AIDS sufferers die of a common cold in the end? You can't predict when that will happen.

As for who has it, I said "wonder if they should have been more careful". A medical record will show if you are a so-called "AIDS-baby", and it will also be recorded if you contracted HIV via a blood transfusion. What I meant was, if someone has tracks up their arms, and has HIV (which later develops into AIDS), it IS almost certainly their fault, and you would have to wonder, should this pint of blood be used on them when they put themselves in that situation?

You can't accurately make a judgement on someone's promiscuity of course.

 

[securespark]

What I'm saying is, a health professional may not know how the infection was transmitted. You cannot see HIV and think it's their fault.

And in any case, regardless of what the patient has or has not done, the treatment would be the same.

If someone goes "one under" (ie jumps under a train), then the paramedics have a duty to do all they can to save them, even if the victim plainly wanted to die.

Would you let them die, thinking "well, they chucked themselves off a train, they wanted to die and they don't deserve treatment."?

 

[AdamW]

No, but there is a difference. Suicide is an immediate, catastrophic event, done by someone who is so upset, sad, depressed, that they feel the only way out is to die. The build up to this is often over a long period of time, you don't kill yourself by slowly poisoning yourself, or standing a little bit nearer the edge of the platform everyday.

Of course I would not deny treatment, I am sure we have all felt at least a tad suicidal at some point in our lives. But, drug abuse is an ongoing activity. It too is sad, but it is avoidable. Anyone can get off any drug if they REALLY put their mind to it. We have education, addict support, programmes to get people off drugs, needle exchange programmes... there is no excuse to contract HIV from drug abuse. I drink, but I wouldn't share a glass with some guy I don't know, especially if I thought there was a chance that his backwash could give me any disease let alone an almost-certainly fatal one.

 

[securespark]

Adam. I can see what you're getting at, but don't entirely agree

BTW.....there is no evidence that HIV can be contracted from saliva....

 

[AdamW]

Not strictly true, I seem to recall the statistic that you would have to drink a bucket of saliva from an HIV carrier to run a considerable risk of contracting HIV.

My point was though, you could get other things quite easily through spit.

I contracted glandular fever some years ago, I was puzzled about the origins of my condition until a few years later when in conversation with a fellow resident of my hall of residence who had G-F at the same time as me. As it turned out, a particularly friendly girl from our hall had been rather friendly to both of us around the same time, although with me it resembled the face-hugger scene from Alien (lasted all of 3 seconds before I managed to prise her off me !) Apparently we weren't the only ones either! She was something of a typhoid Mary.

 

[kendor]

It's a tricky subject regards drug addicts, there are those that have been brought into this nightmare world by underhanded means usually the vunerable, poor (especially women drawn into prostitution and worse, then onto drugs) it would be very hard to differentiate between them and the self abusers, what i was saying earlier i believe to be true that the medical profession shouldn't judge but merely treat the afflicted.
This is the backbone of what makes us human, the care for one another.

 

[kendor]

Lol Adam, I was wondering who was being the alien until i read the last bit of the sentence Messy!

 

[pipme]

Alien ? Kendor from the planet Dorken

 

[AdamW]

Lol Adam, I was wondering who was being the alien until i read the last bit of the sentence Messy!

I felt like something was bursting out of my stomach later on, but that was the dodgy curry I made earlier.

 

[Scoby_Beasley]

2) AIDS patient
2 is sure to die, but who knows how long they will live with proper treatment, yet you can't help but wonder if they should have been more careful.

Adam - I'm sorry to sound harsh, but you are on extremely thin ground here.

First AIDS is the full-blown disease. However, you don't necessarily suffer from "AIDS" - most sufferers test positive for HIV without having the full-blown condition, and as you say can remain HIV+ without developing AIDS for a very long time, especially with the right treatment.

Second, what about those who are HIV+ through absolutely no fault of their own? IE Have received blood products that were not thoroughly screened, or who were born HIV+ because their mother carried the virus?

You cannot make assumptions about HIV+ people and how they became HIV+, and certainly no doctor ever would.

So everyone who gets lung cancer is a smoker and drains the nations resources,, not true, Mr. bleugh(sic) n co. take 10x more revenue from smoking products than they (I) spend on smoking related illness treatment.

More people die from breast cancer (female and male) every year than die from HIV related diseaes, yet aids gets ten times the amount of 'government funding' for research.

More people die on the roads than from hiv but still we have a crap transport network.

Cervical cancer is being researched, testicular cancer isnt, hiv is.

So why do we have to worry about the (99.9%) of hiv,drug taking, chutney ferrets who think the world owes them a life because they are "misunderstood" ?

(Ooooops, might have rattled a wasps nest there)

 

[ninebob]

Sorry to come in late on this discussion, I've been watching with interest. I went with a friend of mine recently whilst she gave blood, and I filled in a comment card expressing my view that I found it upsetting that although I was quite willing to give blood, I was not permitted to purely because I'm gay. I don't recall exactly what I wrote, but it was something along the lines that these days promiscuity exists as much with straight couples, and that I would not dream of donating if there was the slightest doubt that my blood wasn't 100% healthy (in my opinion, you'd have to be very sick of mind to do so)

They emailed me a response :

Ref: 57492

Dear Mr Wright,

Your comments received after the session at Grantham on the 14th December have been passed to me for further comment and explanation. I see that you consider yourself to be at no higher risk than anyone else as you have regular health checks to verify being "in the clear".

However, our donor selection rules are firmly based on epidemiology within the UK, particularly with regard to infections which can be passed on to recipients by any blood with which they get transfused. This means that we are guided by the current patterns of disease caused by such infections in the general population. Many of these diseases are also sexually transmissible, so we do take into account the latest figures from the UK Health Protection Agency. The infections we are most concerned about are HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis C (HCV), but there are several others. Also we have to realise that there may be new undiscovered infections to which some people may be prone – this was the case with AIDS before 1983.

Over the last ten years 15,485 gay men and 18,349 heterosexuals were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the UK: 1,782 more people in whom the ‘risk factor’ has yet to be determined were also diagnosed. In 2003 – the last whole year for which figures are available – there were 1,735 diagnoses in gay men and 3801 in heterosexuals (and 802 in whom the risk factor has yet to be determined). Although these figures clearly indicate that more heterosexuals are being diagnosed these days, it must be borne in mind that no more than 10% of men are gay – most estimates put the figure at around 5%. This clearly indicates that the gay male sector of the population are individually at most risk of getting infected with HIV/AIDS.

The annual rate of new diagnoses has increased recently – in the late 1990’s it was about 1,450. In addition, there are now probably at least 300 gay men in the UK who do not know that they are infected. Apart from anything else, this is a cause of worry to health educationalists, and indicates less general awareness among gay men than is often assumed.

We also can learn a lot from the donors whose donations are confirmed to be infected, as every time we find an infected donation we follow up the donor to counsel them and find out what the risk factor – if any – was. In recent years we have found each year that about 25 donations are infected with HIV/AIDS. Up to half of these donations are given by gay men (who did not know they were infected); half of these gay men donors had given some time in the previous two years. Of the 100 or so additional donations found to be infected with hepatitis B, and the 125 or so with hepatitis C, several are also donated by gay men some of whom have donated within the past two years. So we do know that gay men continue to give blood which has to be rejected.

We do test all donations for HIV/AIDS, HBV and HCV. Although we use the best tests available to us no test is absolutely foolproof. We therefore have to assume that of the nearly 3 million donations we test each year, we may not always get the right answer. In particular, donations collected before the infection becomes detectable – during the so-called ‘window period’ – will be missed. We cannot therefore rely absolutely on the testing to exclude infected donations, and therefore have to use the double strategy of excluding people whose lifestyle puts them at risk as well as donations which test positive for infection.

Yours sincerely,

Dr F E Boulton
Consultant Haematologist and Chair, UK Standing Advisory Committee

On the Care and Selection of Blood Donors

I wasn't sure how to respond. They quote some powerful figures but I still find it to be a very narrow-minded, even bigoted, view. Any comments?

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

I can understand that you feel dissappointed that you cannot contribute, but I would not take this as a personal attack or indeed a slur on the male homosexual community. The fact is that they are trying very hard to prevent further infection and using data on lifestyles is an effective method.

Also, the easiest way for the HIV virus to be passed from one person to another is through an*l sex, which is predominantly a homosexual activity?

And this is maybe a stereotype, so correct me if I'm wrong - but aren't gay men quite promiscious? Even if in a steady relationship, it is quite common not to be 'exclusive'?

In general, straight men have fewer sexual parntners, especially when in a relationship. Not through lack of trying tho probably!!!

Ignore this comment if I'm overstepping the mark here! But in general with a gay relationship, is it the usual to have (without being crude) a giver and a taker? Quite often wondered if this is the case as I've heard this from people but have never known anyone well enough to ask! But seeing as this is the net!!!

OK, last one. Nine, are you the only gay on the forum?
(Spoken in a Brizzle type accent)

 

[2scoops0406]

OK, last one. Nine, are you the only gay on the forum?
(Spoken in a Brizzle type accent)

Welsh !!!!

 

[AdamW]

I'm pretty sure I have seen another openly gay chap on the forum, can't remember who it was though.

I was all indignant reading that response letter (no doubt a mailmerge!), until it got to the "window period" section. I wasn't aware there was a particularly noticeable period between infection and detection, but I suppose it makes sense as the virus needs to establish itself. Just as car insurers discriminate against men as a higher risk, It appears the blood donor service discriminates against gay men as a high risk category. Looking at those 2003 figures it would seem that an actively gay man is 10 times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV than a heterosexual man.

Those figures worry me either way: 18,000 heterosexual men (unless they meant heterosexuals of both sexes) with HIV diagnosed in the last 10 years. And there are cases where someone with HIV knowingly has unprotected sex in order to infect others. That is about 1 in 1700 of the entire male population, regardless of age. And the rate is increasing. Bu**er.

is it the usual to have (without being crude) a giver and a taker?

Or "the butch and the b*tch" Despite me being heterosexual, not even curious, I have known a lot of blokes in my time for whom girls' bits had no appeal. From my observations it would appear to depend on the person and on the relationship. I know a gay bloke who has never "taken" in his life, and the guys he goes out with don't seem to mind. I have also known two gay couples who had a relationship that mirrored a heterosexual one: one guy was a bit more effeminate than the other, but in both cases the "more masculine" one turned to be a right b*stard.

But like I say, that is only what I have observed. It's the same with heterosexual men. Some guys like to be the one wearing the trousers, but others like to be dominated. The rest of us take it in turns and end up a lot happier.