“He who conceals his disease cannot expect to be cured”

Is there a cure?

HIV medication can slow the progress of the virus

Worryingly, surveys show that many people think that there’s a ‘cure’ for AIDS – which makes them feel safer, and perhaps take risks that they otherwise shouldn’t. These people are wrong, though - there is still no cure for AIDS.

There is antiretroviral medication which slows the progression from HIV to AIDS, and which can keep some people healthy for many years. In some cases, the antiretroviral medication seems to stop working after a number of years, in other cases people can recover from AIDS and live with HIV for decades. But they have to take powerful medication every day of their lives, sometimes with very unpleasant side-effects.

But there is still no way to cure HIV, and at the moment the only way to remain safe is not to become infected.

An Advocate.com exclusive posted January 8, 2004 

So I had to explain bug chasing to my mom. On December 2, the day after World AIDS Day, she sent me this e-mail. It started off much like the countless missives she’s been sending me since, well, basically since e-mail began: “I was at the gym today without anything good to read for my 30 boring minutes on the elliptical trainer.” 

So far, so good. 

But then she explained that to fill those minutes, she watched a daytime talk show on the gym’s TV. The day’s subject? Gay men who deliberately try to be infected with HIV—they call themselves "bug chasers." One of the guests was a gay man featured in The Gift, the controversial documentary that was a hit on the film festival circuit this past year (and that airs in February on the Sundance Channel), about a few young gay men who actively pursue “conversion,” who see contracting HIV as a highly erotic entrée into a club of premium exclusivity. 

I think I’m safe in saying that this is something no 24-year-old gay man in Los Angeles wants his mother, living back in Ohio, to see. 

Now you must understand, my mom is quite the savvy gal. I mean, the woman calls me to gab about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy—this is not someone left wanting for sophistication when it comes to the gays. She’s also a clinical social worker who’s seen much in her 20-plus years as a therapist, and yet this phenomenon—this “bug chasing”—was so beyond her, she decided to write to her gay son, who lives in West Hollywood and writes for The Advocate, and ask him, “Where does that kind of wrong thinking come from?” 

It isn’t the first time that question’s been asked. The whole bug-chasing hoop-de-do started, really, with a February 2003 article in Rolling Stone titled “In Search of Death.” It claimed 25% of gay men newly infected with HIV got it from bug-chasing—a rather unsubstantiated figure that was loudly decried as overinflated sensation. Gay columnists Dan Savage and Andrew Sullivan took a swing at the issue, and Newsweek even did a follow-up story in which the doctors quoted in the Rolling Stone piece denied ever offering the one-in-four figure. 

The uproar is perfectly understandable. Not only is bug-chasing abhorrently self-destructive, the argument goes, it’s exactly the kind of behavior that has branded gay men as sick, unnatural freaks in the minds of many, many homophobes. We don’t want people thinking we all live our lives “that way,” yet the attention the media’s paid to bug chasing could easily lead, say, unsavvy mothers living in Ohio to think maybe we all secretly do. 

Still, I think to look at bug chasing as a minor annoyance that can just be swatted away does nothing to answer my mom’s question. The issue here isn’t whether it’s 25% or 2.5%, or even that the press coverage is overexaggerated. It’s that bug chasing sits at the extreme edge of homophobia, a national pathology that has festered so far into the minds of some gay men that a few have begun not only to believe their lives are disposable, but to pursue, actively and even eagerly, their own destruction. 

Think of the young, inner-city black man who doesn’t see a future beyond 25, who looks forward to dealing drugs, joining a gang, or even going to prison—another kind of exclusive club. Of course, I'm not speaking about all young, inner-city black men, or even a large number of them, but it does happen. And when members of a minority begin to believe so fully in their own uselessness to the rest of the world—and even to the rest of their minority—that they don’t care whether they live or die, isn’t it time to put aside political correctness and just address the damn problem? 

Besides, bug chasing isn’t even the scariest thing out there. What terrifies me more are the gay men of my generation who just, you know, kinda forgot to wear a condom with that one guy they slept with that one time—whether or not they got HIV as a result. Here’s a solid statistic that is truly alarming: The CDC reports at least one half of all new HIV infections occur in people under 25; the largest subset of that group is gay men. 

To which I can only reply, What!? 

Of all demographic groups in the whole of this country, you would think that gay men under 25—we who have been pummeled with safer-sex education and HIV/AIDS awareness pamphlets since before we even knew we were gay—would be last in line at the risky-sex buffet. Why do so many young gay men, then, act so recklessly? They may not be chasing the bug, but they sure are certainly fine with occasionally wading into the swamp shirtless and without any bug spray, and I can't believe it's only due to the overconfidence of youth. 

It’s been pointed out that current treatments for HIV and AIDS have made the disease so “manageable” that they have drastically cut the fear factor for catching it. Indeed, Larry Kramer and others have been screaming for a while now that the companies that make those drugs put out far too many ads with buff, healthy, hot HIV-positive men proclaiming how wonderful their lives are. Still, I didn’t really get it until I aired my lament to a gay friend of mine my age. He responded by simply stating, “Well, no one in our generation has had all their friends die from AIDS.” 

Is that it? Do we all need to lose five friends to this disease before my generation will get that having HIV is not just bad, but life-alteringly bad, that the life-extending drugs that must be taken on the strictest of schedules have side effects that make the recent flu outbreak look like a 24-hour cold, and they’re becoming less and less effective? 

And then I think back to my mom, who cared enough about her son to write him and remind him to be safe. I’d worry that bug chasers don’t get that from their parents, but really, my bigger concern is that they don’t get that from their community. How they must have felt when we so quickly jumped at the mere mention of their name, so eager to wash their taint from our skin that we very well may have pushed them that much farther into the abyss. 

http://www.advocate.com/html/stories/906/906_bugchasers.asp

04/19/03: What should we do about bug chasers?
Yes, like it or not, every day HIV-negative gay men intentionally put themselves at risk for infection. But the solution to this reemerging crisis is neither to sensationalize the “chase” nor to condemn it. The solution is give gay men the love and support they need to do the right thing: Live healthy lives.  By John Sonego, director of communications, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation

Last updated: January 23, 2011.

Copyright (c)1999-2011:

The Michael W. Connett Living Trust/South Bank HIVe