gay Berlin clubs bars sex from discodamaged

HIV self test kits

Ever been to one of those HIV quick test clinics? They are appearing all over the place. They say the test only takes five minutes, which is true, but they forget to mention that after filling in forms and queuing 1) for the test and 2) for the results it really takes about two hours. Yawn.

Since a few months ago, HIV self test kits can be bought over the counter in the USA so we decided to check if they are available on the internet. They are. And they look like the ones they use at the clinics and they seem to work. Click the headline for what we found out.

Safer sex without condoms?

If two men want to have sex and one is HIV- and the other HIV+ but with undetectable viral load, can they have safer sex without a condom? The debate has been open for a few years now and opinion, both medical and on the street, has slowly been coming to the answer Yes. Since October 1 the British government has offered free treatment for HIV to everybody in the UK, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. (More here.) The reason for their generosity is to reduce the numbers of new HIV infections. That is almost an official Yes to the question. Two days ago queer.de published a question and answer article, which is the clearest explanation of the known facts that I have seen. The answer is Yes - with some qualifications. Click the headline for our edited translation of their article.

Old stoners are dull bores shock

We've written dozens of these "According to a new report..." pieces whereby we marvel at somebody getting a grant to establish the bloody obvious - but with peer reviewed papers and white coats etc. Anyways, folks who start smoking cannabis at a young age rot their brains - yes, old stonerswho started young are less smart AKA dull bores whose brains have a prediliction for conspiracy theories.

I think anybody who has ever lost a friend to cannabis can testify to that - the spliff ash burn marks on the clothes, incredibly dull conversations, daytime TV addiction.  The only thing in which they excel is their near autistic/ encyclopaedic knowledge of 24 hour garages and the art of getting cereal packets through that tiny hole they use at night.

Gay urban myth

How often have you heard or said, "I have an undetectable viral load and so the risk of getting HIV from me is very small even without using a condom." It's a seductive message, even more so because there is some truth in it, but there are serious complications. As Dr Ulrich Marcus of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin said, "There are simple truths and complex truths. People like simple truths - complex truths are often inconvenient, because they require people to realize that what they do – even if they act with best intentions – may have unintended consequences." Continue reading for the complex truth and more...

New approach to avoiding HIV

Researchers at Columbia University NYC have been interviewing HIV- men who bareback. They explored the men's inner contradictions: "I don’t want HIV", "I bareback". Standard practice is to give these men information about the dangers associated with their behaviour. The researchers suggest an alternative approach to helping the men. Read on Aidsmap here.

HIV and hepatitis

NAM / Aidsmap tell us about a new study that shows chronic infection with hep-B is associated with twice the risk of death compared to chronic hep-C infection among people with HIV. Click the headline for more.

LOW VIRAL LOAD - NOT SO GOOD

"A study of 101 gay men at the Fenway Health HIV clinic in Boston, USA (Politch) has found that a quarter of men with undetectable viral loads in their blood nonetheless had detectable HIV in their semen.

Although seminal viral load in these men was low (median 200 copies/ml), the researchers suggest that this is still enough to be one of the explanations for ongoing transmission in gay men despite a high proportion being on antiretroviral therapy."

Read more on Aidsmap.

HIV VACCINE APPROVED FOR TESTING

Researchers in Canada have had an HIV vaccine approved for testing by the US FDA. So far the vaccine has been tested on animals and it has had promising results. The vaccine uses a new approach - it uses the entire HIV virus. This has never been done before. The next phase of trials will be on 6,000 plus humans, whose health will be tracked for three years.

Read more here.

HIV NEWS

We reported two weeks ago that new HIV infections in Germany in 2011 should be down about 7% and a UNAIDS report says the same is happening worldwide: "New HIV infections continue to fall and more people than ever are starting treatment", they said in their World AIDS day report. People on treatment are much less infectious, which explains why the two go hand in hand. 

Now we read in New Scientist about a novel approach to an HIV vaccine. Vaccines have had very limited success, some can reduce the risk of infection thus decreasing total new infections, but not enough for me to say: Right, I'll give up the condoms. 

This one does not work by priming the immune system, which is compromised as soon as you get the infection. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a way of getting genes into muscles which pump out HIV antibodies. Muscle tissue is not invaded by a new HIV infection. So HIV entering the body is attacked by the antibodies coming from these well hidden factories. So far they have only tested it on mice equipped with human immune systems. The little furry animals remained HIV free, even when injected with a hundred times the amount of HIV virus that will usually infect them. The researchers say that they will be able to start testing in humans in about two years.

Could it be safe to go to Berlin sex clubs without any condoms in four years time?

GAY PRIDE REMEMBERS ALAN TURING

Berlin CSD (Gay pride) 2012 will honour Alan Turing the gay British mathematician, computer pioneer and code breaker who was busted for gross indecency in 1952 and committed suicide two years later. 2012's motto will be "Wissen schafft Akzeptanz" - 'Knowledge brings acceptance'.

Berlin CSD hits us 23 June 2012, Turing's 100^th anniversary, with the big street party the week before. Two years ago the British government gave a belated apology to Alan Turing. Read here on damaged.

More on the Alan Turing year at http://www.turingcentenary.eu/

FISH PEDICURES OK

British tabloids The Sun and Daily Mail have been scaring readers with stories that people who indulge in fish pedicures risk catching HIV or Hep-C. As you might imagine this invented story is based on a Health Protection Agency recommendation which stated "Fish pedicures unlikely to cause infection." Read more on aidsmap.

PEOPLE WITH HIV LIVE 15 YEARS LONGER

A British study has scientifically confirmed what we guessed. Life expectancy of people with HIV has increased by 15 years compared with 1996 but is still 13 years less than the general population. It's due to the new anti-retroviral drugs now available. They warn that starting treatment later than recommended can knock that 15 years off again. So if you're at risk, get checked regularly. Read the full article here on the British Medical Journal.

Six days later we receive an email from aidsmap saying that "A new UK study suggests that with prompt treatment, the life expectancy of many HIV-positive people is near normal". They are talking about the same study as above. Read their article here.

SUCCESS WITH HIV VACCINE IN SPAIN

Spanish scientists have had quite a success with an HIV vaccine they invented. 90% of uninfected volunteers who took the vaccine produced an HIV immune response. The HIV genes used in the vaccine could not replicate, so there was no risk of giving the volunteers the infection. The next step is a larger trial with people who have HIV. The drug could make an additional treatment to fight HIV. Read more at Voice of America.

THREE PER DAY

A French study of 106 people with HIV and Hep-C reported that those who drunk three or more cups of coffee a day were 80% more likely not to suffer from adverse side effects. The report was given at the tenth AIDS Impact Conference has just finished in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Read more on Aidsmap.

ECSTASY KILLS CANCER. WE HEART SENSATIONALIST MEDICAL HEADLINES.

According to a new report, "Modified ecstasy could one day have a role to play in fighting some blood cancers.... Ecstasy is known to kill some cancer cells, but scientists have increased its effectiveness 100-fold, they said in Investigational New Drugs journal", reports the BBC.

Before you wonder what the heck blood cancer is it's an umbrella name for things like leukaemia. As ever, any treatment's a very long way off... We always knew laughter and happiness was the best medicine.

HITLER WAS TRANSSEXUAL

Well, Hitler was to be transsexual, if the British secret service in WWII had had their way with him. They planned to lace his food with oestrogen, the hormone that gives you tits, so he would have gone all nice and made the tea instead of being a coke fuelled maniac. That's according to Prof Brian Ford in a new book. Read more on Newslite where we got the picture from.

END OF HIV?

Great excitement at the world's largest HIV/AIDS scientific conference in Rome a couple of weeks ago: they foresee a world free of HIV with two new treatment methods. New Scientist writes "Two independent groups working in Africa have announced that putting uninfected heterosexual people on low doses of ARVs reduced their risk of catching HIV by 63 to 68 per cent - on just one 25 cent pill a day". They suggest targeting vulnerable groups: sex-workers, vulnerable young women, uninfected partners of HIV carriers and gay men. The other treatment is to put HIV+ people on treatment early. Combining these, the hope is to stop further spread of HIV. Full article on New Scientist, if you have a subscription.

EVEN FINGERS = LONGER COCK

 
People are forever looking for ways to determine a stranger's cock size without getting down there and seeing for themselves. Now Korean scientists have discovered that if the second and fourth fingers are of similar length, it means a longer one. They tested men who were under anaesthetic and measured their members both stretched and not. Is that ethical? Read more here.

SUPER GONORRHOEA

Scientists in Japan have discovered have discovered a strain of Gonorrhoea that resists all antibiotics. "It may spread rapidly", says Doc Unemo in Sweden. Drippy dicks all round then. Read more on CBS here.

KETAMINE AND YOUR BLADDER

"There is growing evidence that chronic use of the recreational drug ketamine is linked with severe bladder problems" they report in New Scientist. Since 2007 doctors at University College London have seen incontinence, bladder shrinkage and enormous pain in people using ketamine frequently. They have even had to remove four patients' bladders.

Everything in moderation! Read the article on New Scientist here.