San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, October 22, 2001
Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer

The just-released study also showed what experts already knew: Gay men don't find HIV as threatening as they once did, ads for AIDS drugs are seen as glamorizing life after infection, and there is increased acceptance of unprotected sex.

The study was conducted last summer with 55 gay and bisexual men from San Francisco, divided into six focus groups. Author Stephen Morin, director of UCSF AIDS Policy Research Center, said the study's purpose was twofold: to get gay men to explain the rise in infection rates and define prevention messages that might reduce risk among gay and bisexual men.

Recent Department of Health projections indicate a rising rate of new HIV infections, translating into about 750 new infections this year.

"The community norm has changed," Morin said. "Guys in the survey told us a friend may go on a date, or to a bathhouse, but the question 'Were you safe?' doesn't come up. That 'Friends don't let friends drive drunk' kind of social support that came out loud and clear -- there's been a real deterioration in that. And it seems to be a major way people felt supported for staying negative."

Men in the focus groups recommended a new social marketing campaign with ads on television, in magazines, on bus shelters, in bars and sex clubs, encouraging gay men to talk with their friends about HIV and dispel some of the myths. One of the slogans that emerged from the study: "Friends Can Be Good Medicine -- Talk About HIV."

Steven Tierney, director of HIV prevention for the San Francisco Department of Health, said advertisements also need to encourage safe behavior.

Though the Health Department has been promoting detailed prevention messages urging gay men who engage in anal intercourse to use condoms, the message often has fallen on deaf ears.

Men in the survey also expressed concern that ads for AIDS medications glamorize life after infection and need to be counterbalanced with images of men suffering from drug side effects.

"We need to reinvigorate a community norm of taking care of oneself and making safer decisions," Tierney said. "The messages don't need to scare people as much as alert them to the reality that there are serious consequences to getting AIDS."

Tierney said new ads should be ready by early next year.

Antonio Kruger, head of a young men's group at the Stop AIDS Project in San Francisco, said the new ad campaign is a good idea as long as it is accompanied by accurate information about how HIV is transmitted.

"Scare tactics only work in the short term," he said. "The solution has to be for the long term. It has to focus on facts and it has to show diverse people and break the barrier of homophobia that two men having sex is wrong and evil. I've spoken with several young men who believe they deserve catching AIDS.

'Why worry,' they've said, 'I'm going to get it anyway.' "

Jeff Getty, a member of the AIDS activist group Survive AIDS, said a better prevention tool would be to send gay men into sex clubs to be safe-sex advisers.

"A little piece of paper is not going to stop people from engaging in unsafe sex," he said. "Send people out in the trenches."

E-mail Christopher Heredia at cheredia@sfchronicle.com.

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