Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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San Francisco Examiner - July 15, 2000
Ulysses Torassa, Examiner Medical Writer
Gay men are the ones most likely to remain mum with casual sex partners, according to research reported Thursday at the 13th International AIDS Conference. Sixteen percent of gay men who were included in a nationwide sample of 1,397 HIV-positive people receiving medical care reported having at least one episode of unprotected sex with an unaware partner in the last six months, according to the study by UC-San Francisco researcher Dan Ciccarone. The rate was about 5 percent among straight men and women.
"The good news is that most HIV-positive people - gay men, straight men and straight women - are either abstinent or having sex only with disclosure," Ciccarone said. "The disconcerting part is that for some groups in a casual relationship, they're not telling their partner."
The findings coincide with other recent reports that have noted while overall HIV infections are down, there remain pockets of mostly young men who are still becoming infected. Ciccarone found men in stable relationships are much more likely to tell their partner about their HIV infection. Among women, half of the unprotected sexual encounters with an unaware partner were in the context of a stable relationship, and half were casual.
"We do have some continued transmission, and where it's happening is in casual relationships with unprotected sex and sex without disclosure," Ciccarone said. "In a large population this is what could be fueling a low-incidence transmission."
Ciccarone, a doctor who often gives talks in the gay community about AIDS, said whenever he brought up the topic of discussing HIV status with sex partners, a debate almost always broke out over whether it was the responsibility of the person with the virus to tell, or of the person's sex partner to ask.
"It's fascinating to listen to that," Ciccarone said. "It means it's a divided issue."
Ciccarone suggested a new public health campaign might be entitled "Ask and Tell."
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