Category Archives: Health
Campus Crusade to work with gay group on HIV/AIDS?
In my hometown paper’s weekly religion section last Saturday, an article profiling a Florida Campus Crusade leader noted the leader’s initiative to start an HIV/AIDS outreach group with a campus LGBT student organization:
Josh Spavin knows the stereotypes about evangelical Christians — judgmental, sanctimonious, narrow-minded. He may not buy into the image, but he knows how real — and damaging — it can be.
So that’s why Spavin, a recent graduate of the University of Central Florida and an intern with the university’s chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ International, wants to start an HIV/AIDS outreach with a campus gay-lesbian group.
“Because of the way they perceive us,” Spavin, 25 said. “What we wanted to do is find common ground where we can serve along side with them…. We don’t necessarily agree with their choices, because that’s not part of our faith, but we still love them.”
Spavin will be walking a thin line — one that separates Christian charity and anti-gay proselytizing. The article doesn’t interview anyone with a campus LGBT group, but I hope they are wise enough to put into place restrictions on how Campus Crusade can approach those LGBT people with HIV/AIDS. It’d be an awful sight to see the Crusaders take this opportunity to show gay and lesbian people “the evil of their ways.” The campus gay group certainly wouldn’t want to be known as the group that enabled it.
Despite my skepticism, I wish Spavin the best of luck. Maybe he will change something. Maybe he’ll learn real life lessons he’s never had the chance to know before.
Merck seeks Gardasil approval for boys
Reports yesterday noted that drug company Merck will be approaching the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to get approval for the use of Gardasil in boys.
The Associated Press reported:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has two months to decide whether the application for use in males meets its standards. Reviews can then take 10 months or more.
The application includes research data from a Merck study including about 4,000 males, ages 16 to 26; Gardasil prevented 90 percent of cases of penile cancer and genital warts caused by the four common virus strains targeted by the vaccine.
The agency approved use of Gardasil in females ages 9 to 26 years old in June 2006, but last June rejected expanding that to include women ages 27 to 45. The vaccine has since been approved for use by young women in dozens of foreign countries.
And why is this important, especially for gay, bi and MSM male youth? The CDC says (emphasis mine):
Other HPV-related cancers are much less common than cervical cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2008, there will be:
- 3,460 women diagnosed with vulvar cancer;
- 2,210 women diagnosed with vaginal and other female genital cancers;
- 1,250 men diagnosed with penile and other male genital cancers;and
- 3,050 women and 2,020 men diagnosed with anal cancer.
Certain populations may be at higher risk for HPV-related cancers, such as gay and bisexual men, and individuals with weak immune systems (including those who have HIV/AIDS).
I hope the FDA doesn’t drag its feet and I hope new tests and trials will extend Gardasil’s effective use in boys to a similar age range as girls (9-26 years old). There’s no reason whatsoever to keep an effective, preventative drug off the market if we know it will help keep young men safe.
Photo credit: istockphoto
Oh, no they didn’t!
Devon is a good friend of mine. He’s an exotic dancer in and around the Carolinas and I’ve known him for a while. He’s got a hell of a lot more balls than I do (no pun intended); I don’t think I could ever take my clothes off in public. He does it like it’s no big deal.
Yeah… he’s the guy with the ad over on the right, in case you hadn’t noticed by now.
But I respect Devon, despite the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever truly felt comfortable in the places he works.
He’s also doing some great blogging over at devonhunter.info (NSFW).
Florida doctor advocates ’strategies to reduce the number of gays’
A Florida doctor who has served on several non-profit and public boards and committees has written in a conservative blog site that the Massachusetts Department of Health should “reduce the number of gays.”
Speaking on a recently released Massachesetts study on the health disparities between LGB and straight people, Dr. Richard Swier states:
Reduce and eliminate health disparities? How about we eliminate gay, lesbian and bisexual behavior? Perhaps the Department of Health, Governor and Legislature should create strategies to reduce the number of gays, lesbians and bisexuals. That would solve this health crisis.
Swier is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. He currently serves on the board of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County and an advisory committee of the county school system. In the past, Swier has twice chaired the Sarasota Better Business Council and once sat on the board of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce. He is the president of the Sarasota County Veterans Commission and was appointed chairman of the Sarasota National Cemetery Advisory Committee by Republican Congressman Vern Buchanan.
Fighting AIDS in the South
I don’t know if everyone saw it, but there was a great profile of North Carolina HIV/AIDS pioneer Evelyn Foust in Sunday’s Raleigh News & Observer:
Evelyn Foust would have been happy to be out of her career by now.
As North Carolina’s chief HIV and AIDS fighter, Foust has seen firsthand how the virus has morphed from seemingly isolated cases among gay men to a worldwide epidemic that infects 33 million people. In North Carolina, an estimated 31,000 people have HIV or AIDS.
Evelyn Foust
On Monday, World AIDS Day focuses a passing spotlight on the disease. For Foust, who heads the state’s Communicable Disease Branch, the disease is a daily pursuit.
For Foust, the disease became concrete one day in 1985, when a young man walked into the public health clinic in Charlotte where she worked. Sitting knee-to-knee with him, she broke the news that he faced a fatal infection.
“I remember his face to this day,” she says. “Beautiful big brown eyes. He said, ‘My test result is positive, isn’t it?’ And I said it was positive. And he looked at me, and I looked at him, and I didn’t have anything I could offer. The only thing I knew to do was reach over and squeeze his hand. And I said I was sorry.”
Too many similar conversations followed.
Foust and other HIV/AIDS workers and organization heads are now working together in the Southern AIDS Coalition. As HIV/AIDS has slowly become a life-long disease, instead of an almost immediate, fatal one, cases in the South continue to rack up. The disease still disproportionally infects Southerners, especially in communities of color and among men who have sex with men.
HIV/AIDS disproportionally affects Southerners, especially men who have sex with men and in communities of color.
Today is World AIDS Day — a day to remember, but also a day to act. I know the economy is bad, but if you have the extra funds, donate to a local AIDS service organization. Or, commit yourself to volunteering or raising awareness of the issue in your own unique way. Remind your friends of the importance of protecting their health by making wise, safe-sex decisions. If you haven’t been tested, or can’t name the place and time when you last were, commit yourself to going for another test as soon as you can.
“Diagnosing and fixing was an old model,” Foust says in the News & Observer piece, regarding HIV/AIDS responses. “It worked for other sexually transmitted diseases, but this was a disease where there was no cure, so you had to work on prevention and testing. People had to protect themselves.”
Taking care of your own health is paramount. Being a part of a community and helping your friends and neighbors do the same thing is just as paramount.
NC Pastor: Stop condeming, start healing
The Winston-Salem Journal, my lovely hometown newspaper, published a great column by John Railey. Interviewing an African-American minister, Railey’s column delves into just some of the multitude of issues that make stopping HIV/AIDS difficult in black communities and in the black church:
