Power Little Spoon-- euphemism for "power bottom"Teehee. Sorry. It's getting late, and I'm getting tired.
Gene therapy that could immunize people against the most common type of HIV is ready to be tested on humans.I will buy dinner to the first person who can find out how the crazy right-wingers are going to turn this into a cloning, abortion, etc. argument. (The only argument I will not accept is this: AIDS cures people of they gay... I'm sure Fred Phelps has already said that enough, so let's just let sleeping assholes lie.)
ruiting for the trial began Tuesday, and the first people to receive the experimental treatment will be HIV patients with drug-resistance problems.
"We do have good treatments for HIV. That has been one of the most successful stories of the last 20 years in medicine," said Pablo Tebas, an infectious disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania.
"However, over time, if the medications are not taken properly, individuals develop resistance to the HIV treatments, so they tend to have more limited therapeutic options."
Since the discovery that a small portion of people who are exposed to HIV do not get infected, scientists have been working to discover the secret to those people's resistance and how to make others resistant as well.
It turns out that most people have a gene called CCR5, which makes them vulnerable to HIV infections. The naturally resistant people have mutant CCR5 genes that inhibit HIV.
Previously, scientists found that by cutting the CCR5 gene out of white blood cells involved in the immune response known as T-cells, they could protect a tube full of human cells from the virus. The gene editing technique relies on proteins called zinc finger nucleases that can delete any gene from a living cell.
In theory, zinc finger nucleases could give that immunity to anyone.
The procedure is simple: Take some healthy T-cells out of an HIV patient, clip out their CCR5 genes, grow more of these clipped T-cells in a dish, and then put them back in the patient.
"In this first study we will re-infuse approximately 10 billion of these cells back into the participants, and we will see if it is safe and if those cells inhibit HIV replication in vivo," said Tebas. "We know they do in the test tube."
Public health types are always agonising about oral sex. Should we say it’s dangerous or not? Now, Swedish researchers have shown that lots of oral sex with an HIV-infected partner may actually be protective against the virus.I'll say this about oral sex, as a "public health type:" the reason we agonize over oral sex is simple. Long again, when I worked at Planned Parenthood, my NP had an argument that I didn't agree with at the time but one I get now: we shouldn't cure HIV because there needs to be something we are scared of out there. With oral sex, though there are no conclusive proving transmissability via oral sex, and the cases are anecdotal and prove nothing, it would be irresponsible to say that "oral sex transmits HIV" because we're pretty sure it doesn't.
The study, published in the (expensive, subscription only) AIDS journal and helpfully summarised by Aidsmap suggests that men who give lots of blow jobs to their HIV-positive partners develop antibodies specific to that partner’s virus, protecting themselves against infection. The more virus their partner has kicking around in their semen, the higher the concentration of specific antibodies, and the protection seems to last for quite a while too. None of the men became infected over the course of the study, even though their partners were not all on treatment.
I’ve never been one for warning people off oral sex — while it is not 100 percent risk free it’s almost always safer than any of the alternatives that provide as much fun. But I’d hate to lose my agonised public health type credentials entirely, so I’ll point out a caveat in this study. The couples who were recruited, an infected man with an uninfected partner, had to have been together for at least 6 months — beyond the most dangerous period for infection in most cases. Any guys who did get HIV through oral sex in that risky early part of their relationship wouldn’t be in the study, because they would no longer be in a “discordant” relationship.
Hey guys! I’m Trevor — one of the three organizers of “The Bottom Monologues,” and I’m thrilled to see this project in motion. “The Bottom Monologues” is first and foremost about cutting through all that bullshit stigma that plagues queer communities about taking it in the butt. We’re bottoms, and we’re proud of it thank-you-very-much! It’s kind of like the “Vagina Monologues,” with a few obvious differencesSo, help them out. It's real easy to submit your piece (ha -- get it, submit - bottom... I think it's funny). I promise I will post mine here when I get around to writing it.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we can get this thing on stage, we need to hear from YOU! Yes, that’s right, I said you. Not a bottom? That’s cool. You probably still have a few ideas that you’d like to share about bottoms or getting fucked. So let me explain this process a bit:
I. First, we’re collecting *your* stories about *your* lives as a bottoms, tops, versatiles, or none-of-the-above. We’ve developed this lovely online questionnaire for your fill out that asks some pretty broad questions about bottoms: what is a bottom, what’s great sex as a bottom, what’s different between tops and bottoms — that sort of thing! I think it’s a pretty fun exercise, since most of us really don’t get to talk about bottomming out in the open. Which is exactly what this project is all about!
II. We’ll collect all those amazing and fabulous stories and look for consistencies across them. What’s similar in the stories we get? Is there a particular narrative that pops up in many of your stories? And of course, we’ll also be looking for stories that stand out from those similarities and challenge the those common themes.
III. Once we’ve had a chance to pour over the data, we’ll do our best to distill the stories into “composite characters” — our best effort to boil down dozens of stories into one. These will be the products that will be shown on stage in the “Bottom Monologues,” an expression of the diversity and richness of bottoms’ lived experiences. You may not see the word-for-word account of your fabulous experiences in the final product, but you can be assured that it has had an impact on the stories we’ll tell on stage.
I hope you join in on this amazing project. Help us bring the “Bottom Monologues” to life. It will be fabulous. You can have a hand in making our vision happen. Join us! Tell us your story today!
I'm curious about the law in North Carolina. There are some great discussions going on, at the Q-Notes site, as well as on TrevorHoppe.com and on Joe.My.God. I wanted, instead of talking myself (you can read my comments on TrevorHoppe.com), to post some other people's reactions. What do you think?A gay disc jockey in Raleigh originally convicted of violating HIV infection regulations in August has been placed on house arrest after admitting he broke probation orders in early October.
On Sept. 6, Q-Notes reported that Joshua Waldon Weaver, 23, who works in clubs in Raleigh and Wilmington, pleaded guilty to charges that he failed to disclose his HIV-positive status and engaged in unprotected sex with three people. Weaver was given a suspended jail sentence and placed on probation. The terms of his probation ordered Weaver to use protection when engaging in sexual activity.
About two weeks ago Weaver was arrested after Wake County Public Health officials contacted his probation officer with information that he had possibly violated court orders by having sex without a condom. Assistant District attorney Boz Zellinger told The News & Observer that health officials became aware of the DJ’s violation after he contracted another sexually transmitted disease that could have been prevented by the use of a condom.
Weaver could have faced 40 days in jail for his most recent violation, but District Court Judge Jacqueline Brewer instead sentenced him to six months of electronically-monitored house arrest. He will not be allowed to leave his father’s house except for probation-approved employment. Brewer also ordered
Weaver to undergo a psychological evaluation.If Weaver breaks his probation again, he will face up to 25 days in jail and prosecutors will ask for a two-year quarantine in a state prison hospital.“His behavior hasn’t changed,” Zellinger told the Raleigh newspaper after the hearing. “We’re trying to address the callousness his actions have demonstrated.”
Zellinger added, “It’s not a witch hunt. It’s a desire to change his
behavior to benefit the community.”
(from Q-Notes, a gay mag from the Carolinas')
Ok, so, I found the NCLaw here. Fascinating law, actually. This is what it says about HIV-infected persons:Well Trevor,the truth is that he needs to be plastered on billboards across the nation. Don’t you want your friends and family members to know who he is when they see him? Well, I do. Maybe one of your close loved ones will bring him home for dinner after dating him a significant amount of time before meeting the family. LOL. GET REAL AND FACE REALITY!!!! He’s sick and he wants to take all of us with him. Maybe you want to join him or are you already in the group. Where’s your picture?
(from Q-Notes)
Trevor & Chris: HIV is a communicable disease, correct? So is TB, correct?
What about all those folks quaranteened for TB? Does the government have the right to tell those people to stay in their homes?
Does the government have the right to prevent the spread of a communicable disease?
(from Q-Notes)
imageofman - I have problems with quarantines but generally agree with them for airborne diseases. This is not the case with HIV. HIV can not be contracted accidentally(mother to child is an exception) . If you have sex, HIV and other std’s are part of the risk you take. If you’re worried about HIV decide for yourself how worried you are and then make your choices. To be PERFECTLY safe don’t have sex, to be safer sleep with one person you trust, to be even safer always use a condom. The cost/ benefit is up to you. I don’t care who this guy sleeps with and I don’t care if he lies to his partners - it’s not my business or yours!
(from Q-Notes)
Hideous....I agree whole-heartedly, Trevor.
I also can't get past the point that he got "caught" because "he
contracted another sexually transmitted disease that could have been prevented by the use of a condom".....first of all it's a bit presumptuous that an STD infection is immediately proof of unprotected anal sex when most every infection can also be transmitted orally....or is it the state of NC's position that HIV+ people must use condoms for oral AND anal sex? (which isn't, to my knowledge, really in keeping with safer sex messaging out there coming from most anyone who knows anything). And for that matter if STD's are included in this code they're using to convict him, then do they now do partner tracing to find the person who gave him this most recent STD and arrest that person, too? Talk about barriers to accessing testing and care? Or participating in a partner notification process to keep your sexual partners healthy?
It's also particularly problematic that a queer publication would run with the story in this way...it's bad enough that queer men and HIV+ men get defiled by the mainstream...but to have our own community legitimizing it! *barf*
We live in a scary scary country!
(from TrevorHoppe.com)Why not just make him wear an electronically-monitored chastity belt?
(from Joe.My.God.)Hmm. Two-year quarantine in a state hospital. Nice. What's "appropriate?" How about a "penis-ectomy"? Orchidectomy? Hormonal castration?LOVES me those Southern states!!!Are there normally two willing partners in any sex act, or just the "dangerous" one?
(from Joe.My.God.)This guy isn't bright enough to care that he is walking around with a loaded gun in his pocket, one that cannot be taken from him and the worst thing that can happen is that the state will clothe, feed and house him at the expense of taxpayers for two years. At the end of that time, he'll probably get out hornier than a fifteen year old and start doing damage all over again. WOW! How about making him work in a long term care facility with people dying of AIDS and/or in a home care capcity for someone who is housebound due to the disease? If re-education is the key to reform, then please put this stoopid motherfucker in a situation that promotes learning.
(from Joe.My.God.)here we go again with the long slide down the slippery slope. You could sneeze in an elevator and pass along the influenza virus which can have lethal (albeit rare) complications. People aren't likely to give up breathing (and coughing) anytime soon, nor is it realistic to imagine that sex will go away. As this trend goes, along with the fear-mongering 'media-terrorism' of the hourly news cycle, there is no goal in the culture wars more sacred that criminalizing HIV. We are the victims of this dread disease. Our civil rights are not up for grabs. The irresponsible behavior of one individual does not reflect the values of our community as a whole. This must be made emphatically clear. For me I think it's much more useful to focus on near goals that are real and attainable - serosorting, for example. Advocating among all my poz friends to stay up on the latest treatment info and help them out of the debilitating depression that is so common among us long-termers would be another. I walk the walk every fucking day - and I'm not about to let some looser (no matter how cute) from Carolina define the terms my fight. I can be just as creative in name-calling as the next queen - but don't think for a moment that I am unaware of my responsibilities and good fortune.Just to wonder out loud, how many of those who excoriate poz guys with such venom have bareback videos in their porn collections? I mean, we could totally put Treasure Island out of business if we really got together and tried to. That would be do-able; turning the tide of public opinion, well, maybe someday if we survive that long.You may not see the courageous around you, nor understand the burdens carried - Whitman said it best - 'he who walks a mile without sympathy surely walks to his grave alone, dressed in his shroud.'
(from Joe.My.God.)
Infected persons shall:That's right kids, unlike Ohio House Bill 100 which makes it illegal to have sex without disclosure (and humorously has commentary about inserting "an instrument, apparatus, or other object that is not a part of the body into the vaginal or anal cavity of another" -- that's actually really unexpected in an Ohio law), North Carolina has made it illegal for someone with HIV to ever have sex without a condom as well as notification of partners, current, past, and future.
(a) refrain from sexual intercourse unless condoms are used; exercise caution when using condoms due to possible condom failure;
(b) not share needles or syringes, or any other drug-related equipment, paraphernalia, or works that may be contaminated with blood through previous use;
(c) not donate or sell blood, plasma, platelets, other blood products, semen, ova, tissues, organs, or breast milk;
(d) have a skin test for tuberculosis;
(e) notify future sexual intercourse partners of the infection;
(f) if the time of initial infection is known, notify persons who have been sexual intercourse and needle partners since the date of infection; and,
(g) if the date of initial infection is unknown, notify persons who have been sexual intercourse and needle partners for the previous year.
Dear gay.com Members,
Since the launch of the new gay.com, the site's performance has been up and down. For those of you who have experienced the site during an outage or when it is slow, we want to apologize. We know that you expect more from us. Many of you have let us know that directly, and you are right. Weare listening.
Not only are we listening, but we are literally working around the clock to give you the experience you expect from gay.com . Site speed and performance are rapidly improving each day. Still, we are not yet where we need to be.
So what can you expect in the days ahead in terms of on-going improvements and our communication to you about them?
1) We are adjusting our hardware configurations and software code to further speed processes. Despite extensive pre-launch testing, a site of the scale and complexity of gay.comis virtually impossible to emulate in a test lab. Additionally, we have seen new usage patterns from the site that we could not model and are adjusting our hardware and code to streamline and improve performance. With the addition of more servers earlier in the week, we have seen positive results in overall site speed. We continue to monitor site performance and may add additional capacity as necessary.
2) We continue to identify and fix the bugs that have resulted in unplanned system outages.
3) We are committed to customer service and getting everyone on the site. We have received a tremendous number of phone calls and emails with your questions and suggestions. We are working to meet your needs as fast as we can. We also know that many people still cannot get into chat for technical reasons. Should you need help immediately, we keep an up-to-date Known Issues link on our blog at http://gay.blogs.com/
4) We promise to be as open as possible in our communication to you. We know these changes (both the relaunch itself and the follow-on outages) can be confusing and frustrating. We will do our best to let you know what is happening, and when and how it may affect you as a user of the site. Given the changes that we need to make, we know that we will need to have a few more planned outages. We will do everything possible to give everyone adequate advance warning of these outages. Whenever possible, planned outages will be conducted in off-peak hours.
Many of you have called upon us to revert back to the "old" site. While the launch of the new site has had its own early challenges, we strongly believe that the new site will be more stable, more flexible and more capable of rapidly meeting your needs, especially when we have worked these last kinks out.
To that end, the feedback we are getting about our new features is valued and appreciated. Yes, there are things that we still need to do (i.e., restoring the ignore and /me features in group chat), but we also have received a lot of positive feedback on many of the changes. Please keep it coming. We really are listening.
We hope this letter helps you better understand what has been happening since the launch. Our first priority throughout this time has been to get all of you on the site and having a great time. We know that we have work to do to get there.
We appreciate your continued patience and support and will do our best to promise you are not disappointed.
The management team of PlanetOut
Want to know the latest, give us your thoughts or need to contact us?
Here's how:
For news on the site, go to http://gay.blogs.com/
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The Bush administration has not yet lifted the regulation barring people with HIV from entering the United States, despite the law lifting the ban overwhelmingly passed by the Congress and signed by president Bush last July. Yesterday, they simply reiterated their previous plans to "streamline" the process, which, in fact, does nothing but make it more bureaucratically cumbersome for temporary visitors with HIV to enter the country as tourists or for conferences. They have done nothing to end the ban as the law clearly asked for.
As it currently stands, I will still be required to leave the US for good next March. And many more are in much worse straits. They say they will change the regs. And that it takes time. My guess is that it will take until after the election. But does anyone believe a Palin administration would make life any easier for people with HIV? For people with HIV, the Palin nomination should be terrifying.
Anyways, you know me, I'm a big softy for being linked from other blogs, so I got giddy when I saw Locavore, Queen City Survey, and Texas Liberal had added me to their blogrolls. I appreciate it, guys. :-)
Just for kicks...I created a fake profile on Manhunt for a week. I paid the membership, and I posted a very basic profile...which was missing the "safe only" option on my profile... Over the course of 7 days, I was contacted by 274 different guys. I contacted 44 guys (trust me when I say that I was busy replying to emails). Of the 318 men that I spoke to (in Manhattan only), 311 were willing to either fuck me raw - or get fucked by me raw - or both...Thats 98% for those still doing the math... The average age of those guys I have chatted with was 28. Tops, vers, bottoms... you all wanted it raw. 18 - 37, from Battery Park to Inwood. You all bareback.... It was a little experiment for me to see just how many of you out there love the raw as much as I do. Surprisingly, you ALL are. Which just goes to remind me of all that hate mail that I get from people telling me I should be shot for fucking raw.... Looks like there should be 311 other dead people with me...I will grant the man this: he's right. He's so very, very right. And I'm not going to alleviate myself of guilt by saying, well, at least I'm not like that. Right. We've all made our mistakes in the past, some greater than others, and some with consequences greater than others. I'm sure he's gotten a lot of grief over what he's writing, but I'm going to grant him this:
