XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX TUE JAN 21, 2003 17:59:25 ET XXXXX MAG: 25% OF NEW HIV-INFECTED GAY MEN SOUGHT OUT VIRUS, SAYS SAN FRAN HEALTH OFFICIAL New ROLLING STONE Managing Editor Ed Needham is set to hit complete controversy with a 4-page report: "Bug Chasers: The Men Who Secretly Long To Be HIV+." Filed by Greg Freeman, the shock story claims some men with HIV are deliberately having unprotected sex with those who want to be infected! MORE "The men who want the virus are called 'bug chasers,' and the men who freely give them the virus are called 'gift givers.' While the rest of the world fights the AIDS epidemic and most people fear HIV infection, this subculture celebrates the virus and eroticizes it," reports Freeman in the February 6, 2003 edition of ROLLING STONE. At least twenty-five percent of all newly infected gay men fall into [bug-chasing] category, according to one claim in the "special report". "In this world, the men with HIV are the most desired, and the bug chasers will do anything to get the virus." Gay groups "aggressively encouraged" Freeman to drop the article. One sad passage captures a young man in New York City who wants to be infected: "His eyes light up as he says that the actual moment of transmission, the instant he gets HIV, will be 'the most erotic thing I can imagine.'" An infector is quoted as saying: "I'm murdering him in a sense, killing him slowly, and that's sort of, as sick as it sounds, exciting to me." Most AIDS activists prefer to deny the problem exists to any significant extent, says Dr. Bob Cabaj, director of behavioral-health services for San Francisco County and past president of Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. "They don't want to address that this is really going on." In a gonzo-journalism ROLLING STONE moment, Cabaj claims at least 25% of all newly infected gay men fall into [bug-chasing] category. END
Wow. How sad and pathetic. Our town also has a vampire subculture where people literally get permanent extensions to their incisors, drink one anothers blood, and avoid the sunlight. Freaky freaky freaky. Sorry, I don't want to equate gay guys and vampire freaks, but actually nihilism and bug-chasing, as a subset of gay guys, is freakier than vampire freaks. Freaks.
it is weird...i wonder how close to right this guy is when he says 25% of newly infected men sought it out!!?? that's not a fringe...that's a significant number.
25% is probably way too high, but what do I know? I know some gay people here, but they're all pretty normal, careful people, as far as I know (I mean, you never really know, to be honest). But I think I can safely say I don't know any of the folks described by the author.
I thought the thud I heard was Yao hitting the Wall... now I realize it was Rolling Stone hitting rock bottom. I'm going to have to pull out my DVD of "Almost Famous" to feel clean again.
i'm with you....the people i know who are gay would think the same way about this that i do, i'm sure.
I don't believe that 25%. I can't imagine any way to get a reliable statistic on this. Doesn't help that the article quotes hearsay and has nothing to back it up.
I think it's easy to get a reliable statistic. I mean, if the statistics of the number of new AIDS cases at a given time is reliable, how hard is it to ask those people how they got it?
i wasnt...was reading drudgereport.com...they linked to the story. though i did read rolling stone's issue on DMB not too long back.
I say let them have it. Once they get it do not give them one cent of Medical help that is from the tax payers. Let them spend their own hard owned cash or die.
Rolling Stone has gone the way of MTV (Empty-V). It's supposed to be about music, and it winds up being about stupidity.
Can't get the Rolling Stone article without a subscription. I hope no one will be too offended if I say I can't completely trust Drudge's synopsis. Anyway, I don't see how you can make a reliable statistic. If you do a voluntary survey, can you trust that respondents will tell you the truth? I wouldn't expect it. And -- though I wanted to read the article to confirm -- it sounds to me like the 25% number was kinda pulled out of the air. As if someone in the culture was saying, 'Yeah I see it a lot -- probably 1 out of every 4 guys I know' without really appreciating that one's circle of friends doesn't constitute a valid statistical sample.
Looks like the Rolling Stone staff has some serious explaining to do. A craven attempt to revive interest in an increasingly meaningless magazine? Seems like the only 2 doctors quoted in the RS piece vehemently deny making those statements, and what few "facts" are presented in the article are easily refutable: http://www.msnbc.com/news/863259.asp?0cv=CB20 ...Cabaj says that attribution is made-up. “That’s totally false. I never said that. And when the fact checker called me and asked me if I said that, I said no. I said no. This is unbelievable.” Cabaj said there’s no way of knowing what percentage of gay men are looking to get infected but that it’s likely very small. http://www.salon.com/opinion/sullivan/2003/01/24/rolling/index.html The piece is also riddled with unbelievably shoddy work. Take this snippet: "With about 40,000 new infections in the United States per year, according to government reports, that would mean around 10,000 each year are attributable to that more liberal definition of bug-chasing." Huh? The 40,000 figure is a Centers for Disease Control number for all HIV infections per year. Anyone with the faintest knowledge of the HIV epidemic knows that men who have sex with men make up a declining number of this group -- now 42 percent, according to the CDC. So even if you buy the bizarre 25 percent figure, you don't end up with 10,000, you end up with 4,200. I mention this obvious point, not because 4,200 is somehow more credible than 10,000. No one, I repeat, no one, has any solid evidence for either figure. I mention it because no serious AIDS journalist would ever write such an ill-informed and obviously fallacious sentence.
This has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever read. Why not put a gun to your head? It's quicker and more painless. Let's see how erotic it is 20 years from now when they're turning pale and dying a slow death. This is absolutely sick, and gives homos a bad name.
