Another Use for Rapid Home H.I.V. Test: Screening Sexual Partners
The first rapid home-testing kit for H.I.V. has just gone on sale for $40, marketed as a way for people to find out privately if they have the virus that causes AIDS.
But some experts and advocates say that another use, unadvertised, for the OraQuick test — to screen potential sexual partners — may become equally popular and even help slow an epidemic stuck at 50,000 new infections each year in the United States.
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Larry Kramer, the longtime AIDS activist, called screening “a potentially cool idea, but it depends on how the partner/date/trick/stranger takes it.” If a test had been around 30 years ago, he added, “there would have been a lot more people alive today.”
Hunteur Vreeland, a professional party organizer who arranges “gay porn harbor cruises” and “underwear erotic parties” at Paddles, a dungeon-themed club in New York, said he would even consider selling home tests at his events. He now offers free H.I.V. testing at them in conjunction with the Men’s Sexual Health Project of Bellevue Hospital Center.
“Knowledge is never a bad thing,” he said. He added that if a potential partner unexpectedly pulled out a test kit, he would probably leave.
Then he reconsidered.
“But if the dude was hot, and maybe I was on the cusp of getting tested anyway — well, then, maybe I’d be, ‘All right, I’ll take it.’ ”
Read more at the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/health/another-use-for-home-hiv-test-screening-partners.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
