Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Examiner - December 1, 2006
Ron Cassie, rcassie@baltimoreexaminer.com
In 1986, Martin was diagnosed with AIDS.
Single then, Martin acquired the disease from a state trooper "when it was still a gay disease in this country."
"The doctor gave me two years," Martin told an eighth-grade class at the Friends School of Baltimore Thursday. "They said I should get my affairs in order."
Martin visited Friends with prevention educator Elizabeth Wexler from the Baltimore-based Steven Kaufman AIDS Outreach Project.
They carried their message to about 50 schools last year and spoke frankly about the deadly nature of the disease and living with AIDS.
"AIDS is an acronym: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome," Wexler said. "That first word, 'acquired', I hate the most because it is preventable."
"You have to remember that when you have sex with someone, it's like you have sex with everyone they had sex with - and the people they had sex with," Martin said. "It's like a pyramid."
They talked about abstinence and safe-sex - meaning a latex condom.
Students understood what AIDS was generally and knew it could be transmitted through contaminated needles, blood and intercourse, but a half-dozen of the 15 or so students were not aware AIDS could be transmitted through oral sex.
"That's important because oral sex is becoming more widespread at the middle-school age," said Wexler, who noted that while the death rates of people with AIDS has fallen significantly, the infection rate in recent years has remained constant.
According to the U.S. Office of National AIDS Policy, 50 percent of all new HIV infections in this country are people ages 13-24.
Two new young people in the U.S. contract HIV at the rate every hour and, globally, 10,000 people a day die of AIDS.
"We teach kids sex with great respect and our parents know that," Friends assistant principal Barbara Buck said.
"The truth is, sex can create a life, but it a life can also be taken away."
Today is World Aids Day.
"It makes me think of the good friends I Iost," said Martin. "Great people I met in treatment and in hospitals. Everyone I met when I first was infected has died."
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