Reply #45: I agree completely. It veered off to gratuitous and actually factually inaccurate issues

[HamdenRice]

Actual stats:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/FastFacts-MSM-FINAL508COMP.pdf

Gay men, black and white are still overwhelmingly the largest risk group. The idea that because AIDS hit the gay community first, they immediately began to reduce the risk through safe practices is absurd; in fact there was a holocaust of death in the 80s and early 90s, and despite the good efforts that were made, the disease became endemic in the community. I'm not saying that this justifies the ban, but that the OP's view of risk groups is dead wrong.

Excluding people is done by a blunt instrument -- large risk group categories. I can't donate because I was in England during the mad cow era and lived in Africa, even though I'm hiv negative. That's just the way public health works.

Spreading malicious stereotypes of one group is not the way to end stereotyping of another group -- a lesson one would have thought should already have been learned on this forum:

http://www.blackqueerradical.com/stories/health-10.19.09-Down%20Low%20Men%20Not%20to%20Blame%20for%20High%20HIV%20Rates%20among%20Black%20Women.html

(Oct. 19) Straight black men with multiple sex partners are responsible for the extremely high rates of HIV/AIDS among black women, not men on the “Down Low,” according to Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) official.

“The majority of these infections are not coming from men who are behaviorally bisexual…but these are men that are having multiple sexual partners with women,” said Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention.

He also attributed the disproportionately high rate of HIV/AIDS among black women to intravenous drug use by their heterosexual male partners.