World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day. Isn’t that a depressing topic? Personally, I think it is. Just like talking cancer and diabetes. It is seriously hard to feel positive about a disease that costs $4000 CDN per month just to keep the thing in control. Not cure it. There is no cure. There is no vaccine.

I was in grade seven the first time I heard about AIDS. At that time, it was considered “a homosexual disease” and so our teacher spent very little time on it. We discussed whether or not you could catch it from touching an infected person or by being in the same room with them. Our teacher insisted that it was passed along by sex and intravenous needle use. Rock Hudson and Liberace died from AIDS, which meant something to our parents but not much to us. That was the extent of our knowledge.

What did it matter, really? We were a bunch of rural kids who only saw a needle in the doctor’s office and had never knowingly met a homosexual person. If anyone in our community had a nasty disease, everyone would know about it. After I became an adult, I found out that doctors and pharmacists are supposed to respect confidentiality, but that certainly was not the case for us. If you bought something strange at the pharmacy – like a ton of heavy duty antibiotics, or, oh, let’s say, condoms, everyone would know.

Information on AIDS was about as relevant to our lives as telling us how to take the NYC subway. We found out that AIDS existed, the adults seemed concerned by it, and it was passed along by having sex with an infected person.

Flash forward twenty years. I’ve met some wonderful people – both gay and straight – who have AIDS. I’ve seen some of the devastation that this disease wreaks on lives. And I’m suddenly the adult talking to my son about safer sex. I’m horrified to find out that the kids today just as stupid about sex as we were.  Here are some statistics:

- Of young people who reported in 2003 that they had sex with multiple partners within the past year, approximately three in 10 had not used a condom the last time they had sex. (From Statistics Canada)

- Over 75% of adults have at least one HPV infection. HPV can lead to cancer.

- From 1985 to 2005, a total of 60,160 positive HIV tests have been reported to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

- Rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis are rising, too.

- About 58,000 people in Canada are living with AIDS. About 30% of them DON’T KNOW THEY’RE INFECTED. Does this freak you out just a little bit?

- Rates of infection are RISING. 14% more people were diagnosed in 2006 than in 2001.

- Rates are rising among straight people.

There is no excuse for this. None. I don’t know what the US has in place for stuff like this (please comment and tell me) but here in Canada, it is free and confidential.

- Get tested at any health unit in Ontario. The Access AIDS Network in Northern Ontario will test you in Sudbury or Sault St. Marie. Here are other places in Canada that have testing. Why test? Because you’ll know, you can keep yourself alive, and you can NOT pass it along to others. There are no benefits to not knowing. If you are not in a committed relationship, get tested every six months.

- Use condoms. Lack of funds is not an excuse. Here in Ontario, you can get free condoms (male or female variety) at a variety of places, including health units and Access AIDS. And don’t use “but I have a latex allergy” as an excuse, because you can get those for free, too. There is no such thing as “safe sex” because there is always a chance of something going wrong, but you can choose to have SAFER sex. Safer sex means doing your best to prevent the bodily fluids of others from getting in or on your body (and vice versa for your partners). Yes, ‘in or on‘.

- Recognize (unlike a certain former U.S. President) that all sex is sex. Anything that involves the genitals of another person means that you may be exposed to an STI. Some STIs are passed along by touching body fluids.

- Be faithful. If you’re not in a committed relationship, be choosy and be careful. If you are in a committed relationship, don’t cheat. It’s really simple not to cheat, you know. And that applies whether your preferred relationships are mono- or poly-amorous. If you and your partner have tested negative *twice*, with six months between the testing, AND you are both faithful, it is safe to go without condoms.

Be faithful. Use condoms. Get tested. It is time that we stopped AIDS.

On another note, treat those who are infected with compassion, please. A close friend of mine got AIDS from his first boyfriend when he was 17 years old and died when he was 25. I knew of another woman who got AIDS from a blood transfusion when she was in high school, and it took ten years before they found out what was wrong with her. Her first child died of AIDS and her second has HIV. By the time they realized what was wrong, the disease was advanced far enough that the mother died. This is a horrible disease. You cannot become infected if you hire a person with HIV or if you rent to an infected person. You will not die if you are friends with an infected person.

And … pray for a cure.