gay Berlin clubs bars sex from discodamaged

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.

SPORT HELPS HIV TREATMENT?

Sport therapy helps treatment of many diseases, but does it help with HIV? Nobody knows right now and people with HIV may be reluctant to do sport because of the uncertainties. Humboldt University in Berlin want to put that right and part of the effort is for people with HIV to fill out an anonymous survey. So if you can help follow this link: http://www.hibes.eu/survey/en/1/ . You can complete the survey in English or German.

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?

LESS NEW HIV INFECTIONS

Good news just before World Aids Day. The Robert Koch institute predict that for 2011 the rate of new HIV infections in Germany will go down for the first time since records began. They say that new infections should be about 2,700 compared to 2,900 in 2010. Of those 1,500 were gay men also down from nearly 1,700 last year. And they say: Keep on using those condoms, get tested regularly.
Read more in German at queer.de. And read about poster boy Marcel (pictured) on http://www.welt-aids-tag.de/

DRUGS BUST IN OBERSCHÖNEWEIDE

Those dodgy Eastern folk are at it again. Police have discovered a speed factory in Oberschöneweide disguised with a genuine factory making medicinal chems. Some of the employees were importing precursor chemicals from as far away as India, selling some on to Poland and doing a bit of processing themselves. They had enough precursor to make one million grams of speed. Phew. One man was arrested.

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.

GAY SEX IN EUROPE

Here's some useful pre-holiday reading if you want to know where they are most promiscuous and where sex venues get the best results (France, Netherlands) or where they have least anal sex (Baltic countries), most check-ups (UK) or safest sex (Alpine countries). Click the headline for our pick of the European MSM Internet Survey comparing sexual habits of over 170,000 gay men in 38 European countries.

 

LIVING WITH HEP-C?

Living with Hep-C and understand German? Then this may be for you. Before Popular music on Wed 14.9 gay club SchwuZ are having a talk show  and "Privatsprechstunde" by Dr. Keikawus Arastéh at 21:00. His subject: "Eine neue Ära in der Therapie der chronischen Hepatitis C". SchwuZ is at  Mehringdamm 61, Berlin-Kreuzberg. Entry free.

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.

BAREBACK NEWS

A couple of weekends ago there was a notorious gay bareback party in Berlin. I met one of the participants afterwards in Bull and he told me that it is now official Swiss medical and legal policy that an HIV+ person cannot give anybody HIV if they have an undetectable viral load. I don't think this is true. They also have to be free of other sexually transmitted infections and the statement only applies to heterosexuals. Read the pros on aidsmap here. If you know any different, please tell us.

MAN FIRED FOR BEING HIV+

A 24 year old Berlin man was fired because he was HIV+. He got a job at Eckert and Ziegler EuroPet GmbH as a lab assistant and during his probationary period was given a medical which included an HIV test. They fired him because they "wanted to protect their clients". He took the case to an industrial tribunal and the court(Arbeitsgericht) rejected his appeal.

Winfried Holz from Deutschen Aids-Hilfe said he was appalled by the decision: the judge had missed an opportunity to correct the law. The decision is all the more shocking in view of the campaign to get queers accepted in the workplace. Read more in German at queer.de.

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.

MAJORITY HAVE SAFER SEX

The great majority of German gay men practice safer sex, so said Michael Bochow last week at the German-Austrian AIDS congress. In a survey 73% said they always had safer sex, 14% said they usually did and 13% said they often did not. More here on queer.de in German.

TEST YOUR GERMAN

Queer.de have an amusing gay-les quiz to test your knowledge on sex. Try it here. Of course it's in German, so you can test your German too. I got four out of ten, but it should have been five. Dr Youle (more of him later) reckons they have the wrong answer to question 7. How do you score?

Hey - they should have a few of these questions in the Hafen quiz on Monday.

PS: Dr Youle, researcher in HIV and lecturer, will be appearing in the Discodamaged documentary 'The Bareback Issue'. Coming soon!

ALCOHOL INDUSTRY STOPS SAFER SEX CAMPAIGN

A safer sex campaign organised by Derek Bowers in the UK was stopped in its tracks after objections from the alcohol industry. It "used different alcohol bottles after researching the links between STI's and one night stands down to excessive drinking." Only one example remains:
Bowers said: "This project has been removed due to various complaints from a number of the major players in the alcohol business." Picture from http://www.behance.net/gallery/Safe-Sex-Campaign/425479

USE A CONDOM!

The Robert Koch Institute, them who can't work out where the cucumber bug is coming from, have published their annual report on new HIV infections in Germany. The headline figures are neutral. New HIV infections in 2010 were 2,918 as against 2,885 in 2009: 33 (1.1%) more, which is barely significant. About half the infections were from gay sex. They increased from 1,646 to 1,684 (38 or 2.3%). Not quite so good, but the rate of increase has improved since 2007.

Koch also gives us a handy map of where the new infection hot spots in Germany are. Sadly Berlin comes out bottom of the league - just like our football team mess. The cities marked on the map have new infections greater than 10 per 100,000 of their population. Berlin are champion idiots with 13. The safest place to be is Thüringen.

Use a condom!Read the full Koch report in German here.

DOES NO MEAN NO IF THE RAPIST CAN'T HEAR?!

"According to recent reports"... Viagra can make you deaf.  So says The Daily Torygraph: "Viagra and similar impotence drugs have been linked to hundreds of cases of sudden hearing loss around the world, including some in the UK."

Awful.  Would Ken Clarke forgive rape if the Viagra fuelled victim raper couldn't hear no means no? And what if the victim was deaf on Viagra too?!