The Ryan White program, named after a teenager who died of AIDS, is celebrating 21 years of existence while the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, one of  its most important components, faces an ongoing funding crisis. #

“Ryan White was diagnosed with AIDS at age 13. He and his mother Jeanne White Ginder fought for his right to attend school, gaining international attention as a voice of reason about HIV/AIDS,” according to a website about the program named for White. White died in April 1990, months before Congress passed the Ryan White CARE (Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency) Act. #

National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors data shows (.pdf) that as of Aug. 11, there were more than 9,200 people living on an AIDS Drug Assistance Program waiting list. The program provides medications for the treatment of HIV and AIDS for people who cannot afford to pay because they are unemployed, uninsured or underinsured. #

With almost 3,800 people, Florida’s AIDS Drug Assistance Prorgam waiting list is the longest in the U.S. The data shows that 41 people joined the waiting list between Aug. 4 and 11. #

Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fort Lauderdale, issued a statement today, saying, “Over the past 21 years, the Ryan White program has served as a lifeline to millions of low-income, uninsured, and underinsured individuals living with HIV/AIDS.” #

Hastings added, “Modern medicine has allowed more people to have longer, richer lives with HIV/AIDS than ever before, but getting them into treatment is another story.” #

Hastings, as well as Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Sen. Bill Nelson, recently helped reverse an Obama administration decision that would have limited the amount of dollars Florida could receive for its AIDS Drug Assistance Program. #

Florida — along with 19 other states — has implemented other cost-containment measures such as reduced prescription drug lists. Since April, the Sunshine State has been considering changing its income eligibility requirements from 400 percent of the federal poverty level to 200 percent. #

Simply put: Under the proposed change, a person who earns $30,000 a year would not qualify for the Drug Assistance Program. HIV/AIDS drugs cost between $10,000 and $20,000 a year. #

Detroit City Council President-elect Charles Pugh addresses a gathering in Detroit suburb Ferndale to discuss a national HIV/AIDS strategy.

In order to address Detroit’s HIV crisis, Pugh said the city needs more action by the city’s health department.

“There needs to be more money targets at the crisis areas,” Pugh said.

And Pugh, who is openly gay, said the city’s church community, which was a key constituency for his electoral win, needs to take action. “The church community is not stepping up.”

Pugh made the comments following a two-hour public hearing sponsored by Housing Works’ Campaign to End AIDS, and several Michigan AIDS service organizations. The hearing was hosted as part of the White House’s Office on National AIDS Policy effort to solicit input from the public about development of a new national HIV/AIDS strategy. Christine Campbell, vice president of national advocacy and organizing for Housing Works, was on hand Wednesday night where about 100 residents gathered to discuss what such a national strategy should look like.

Campbell said White House AIDS policy representatives were not present because there are so few of them, noting that the office has only four employees. “They just can’t be everywhere,” she said.

So in order to assure that Michigan’s input would be heard in the White House, Campbell and her group video taped the hearing Wednesday and that video will be provided to ONAP.

She said she has been to similar hearings in D.C. and Mississippi and had noticed a trend of similar calls for action in increasing resources for treatment, medical care access and housing. She also said there were similar remarks made throughout the country about reaching out to the older population, defined as over 50, because Viagra and other impotency drugs have changed the face of sex and the elderly and exposed them to more sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. She also said there continues to be a serious need for a focus on African-American men who have sex with other men, a community severely impacted across the country and in Detroit.

Silence is deadly for Detroit

Organizers said that they had not heard as much from the Detroit community as they had from other cities being asked to contribute to the discussion on developing a comprehensive national AIDS strategy.

“Detroit’s not making any noise,” Campbell said of the fact the city was left off the original list of cities in which hearings were held. “We’re not hearing the noise … Detroit’s going to have to stand up.”

Pugh said perhaps the city needs to be “a squeaky wheel” to get the attention needed to address the epidemic, but he also said he will be a “noisy voice.”

“Maybe the wrong people are part of this epidemic,” Pugh said, referring to the lack of political access of those infected and affected by the disease in Detroit. “I have the ear of the mayor. I have the ear of the mayor. I can have greater access to them, that is where you take the opportunity to say we need more funding.”

Mark Peterson, a director of Michigan Positive Action Coalition, told the gathering that federal funding needed to be stabilized. Currently, funds for HIV/AIDS are authorized by the Ryan White Modernization Act, which is up for congressional approval every three years. “It is buffeted by the winds and whims of what ever party is in power,” Peterson said. “Yeah, that sucks.”

My good friend Pope Benedict XVI announced that condoms are not the way to address the AIDS crisis in Africa. But wait, he didn’t stop there.

From MSNBC:

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

Um, increases the problem? The use of condoms in magnetic couples (in which one partner is HIV positive and the other is not) has proven to prevent the spread of the virus. In addition, with the implementation of widespread condom availability in the 1990′s, the gay community was able to drop rates of HIV infection.

But the Pope doesn’t want to talk about actually protecting people; he would rather push an agenda of abstinence-only education. You know the old failed policy the Bush administration and supporters relied on for so long? It’s the same policy which South Africa depended upon, in combination with HIV denialism; the policy turned a blind eye to the rape of young girls, a practice which many ignorantly believed would cure them of HIV

According to the Wall Street Journal report, the man was suffering from leukemia and AIDS, and while he continues to receive treatment for the leukemia, the virus has not reappeared in his blood in 600 days.

Traditionally, when a person on antiretroviral medication to treat HIV stops taking the pills, the virus bursts back with a flurry of activity. But this unidentified patient stopped taking the medication and has not had any evidence of the virus in his blood since.

The report explains that doctors believe this is due to the man’s leukemia doctor use of bone marrow from a donor who had genetic immunity to HIV infection.

The development suggests a potential new therapeutic avenue and comes as the search for a cure has adopted new urgency. Many fear that current AIDS drugs aren’t sustainable. Known as antiretrovirals, the medications prevent the virus from replicating but must be taken every day for life and are expensive for poor countries where the disease runs rampant. Last year, AIDS killed two million people; 2.7 million more contracted the virus, so treatment costs will keep ballooning.

So what does this case indicate to experts? The Journal reports:

While cautioning that the Berlin case could be a fluke, David Baltimore, who won a Nobel prize for his research on tumor viruses, deemed it “a very good sign” and a virtual “proof of principle” for gene-therapy approaches. Dr. Baltimore and his colleague, University of California at Los Angeles researcher Irvin Chen, have developed a gene therapy strategy against HIV that works in a similar way to the Berlin case. Drs. Baltimore and Chen have formed a private company to develop the therapy.

“Sounds like good news so far — I’d be hesitant to call it a cure,” Mark Peterson of the Michigan Positive Action Coalition, or MI-POZ, a group of politically active HIV-positive people in Michigan, told Michigan Messenger in an e-mail. Peterson went on to say that the news underscored the importance of research into a specific class of drugs that stop the virus from invading human cells in the first place.

This is possibly very important news in the fight against HIV.

When antiretrovirals were first introduced, and viral loads (the number of viral particles in the blood) were found to have been suppressed to undetectable, doctors thought that eventually cells harboring HIV would die off and the person would be HIV-free. That did not happen. Researchers discovered that the virus incorporated itself into the genetic makeup of the infected person and waited for the opportunity to reignite the infection.

But in 1996, researchers also made another startling discovery, the Journal reports:

…researchers discovered that some gay men astonishingly remained uninfected despite engaging in very risky sex with as many as hundreds of partners. These men had inherited a mutation from both their parents that made them virtually immune to HIV.

The mutation prevents a molecule called CCR5 from appearing on the surface of cells. CCR5 acts as a kind of door for the virus. Since most HIV strains must bind to CCR5 to enter cells, the mutation bars the virus from entering. A new AIDS drug, Selzentry, made by Pfizer Inc., doesn’t attack HIV itself but works by blocking CCR5.

Craig Covey, executive director of the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project based in Ferndale, said he had not heard anything about the case or the reports, and was unable to comment.

While the conservative blogs and news outlets were praising former Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, many in the LGBT community remembered the hatred and bigotry he ushered in during his 30-year tenure in the U.S. Senate. The video above was created by AIDS activists when they covered Helms’ home with a giant condom to protest his advocacy against funding HIV/AIDS education and research. The protest happened in 1991.

By now, everyone has probably read about Helms’ blocking of gay rights measures and stopping HIV prevention and research funding. Some may even know that toward the end of his 86 years, the senator took to working on HIV/AIDS — in Africa, saying he didn’t care about the disease in America because it was a sodomite disease. And some may even recall his nasty re-election bid against Harvey Gantt, where Helms played out the race card in one of the most disgusting political advertisements in recent political history.

Continued -But Michelangelo Signorille adds one last bitter note to the goodbyes for the good senator by reminding us that the man behind his bigoted campaigns, and a man who remains a Republican operative, is also a gay man. The man’s name is Arthur Finkelstein and he was outed byBoston Magazine, and a few years ago he and his partner quietly got married in Massachusetts.

It goes to show, behind every bigot is a closet case.

Far right anti-gay leaders making McCain beg for votes?

The man behind Ohio’s anti-gay marriage amendment, Phil Burress, is doing a little political flip-flopping. After supporting former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s bid for the Republican nomination for president, Burress told The Los Angeles Times that while he might support the ultimate winner of the Republican primary by casting a vote for him, he was unlikely to support him.

Burress, who led the successful campaign for a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage, said he would vote for McCain, largely because he said an Obama victory would lead to new liberal Supreme Court justices and more emphasis on abortion rights. And he suspects that McCain’s coolness toward conservatives could be a calculated gamble to win centrists. But he will not work directly for McCain, and he suspects that many conservatives will stay home on election day. “They think we have no place to go [other than the Republican Party], and in some respects, that’s true,” Burress said. “But it’s going to take a whole lot more than that for him to win.”

But how times they are a-changin’. That was from June 9. Just last week, The Los Angeles Times reported after a heart-to-heart meeting with McCain, Burress was now on board. McCain indicated that he would take seriously their requests that he choose an anti-abortion running mate and that he would talk more openly about his opposition to gay marriage — a pledge he carried out later in the day by endorsing a ballot measure in California to ban gay marriage.

“It was obvious there were a lot of changed hearts in the room,” said Phil Burress, who led Ohio’s anti-gay-marriage ballot measure in 2004. “We realized that he’s with us on the majority of the issues we care about.”

Even with Jesse Helms dead, the LGBT community is still good for scaring up the GOP Christianity hijackers. As a side note, the Times story also noted Burress was pushing hard for the Huckster to be McCain’s choice for veep.

Social Security for gay partners? No. For children of same-sex relationships? Yes.

In a bizarre ruling by the Social Security Administration (SSA), children of same-sex couples are now eligible for survivor benefits. The SSA continues to deny survivor benefits for the adults in the couple. To explain how this looks in reality, let’s create a lesbian couple — we call them Linda and Sue. Sue enters the relationship with biological children from another relationship, but Linda doesn’t adopt the children as her own. Linda dies suddenly. Now Sue’s children are eligible to collect Linda’s survivor benefits. But Sue is left in the cold.

It’s a twisted logic, but it is a step toward recognizing same-sex couples and providing them with the same survivor benefits that are automatically bestowed upon married couples.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that last year the Social Security Administration sent a formal request to the Justice Department to clarify if the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prevented the distribution of benefits to children of same-sex couples. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) deputy, Steven A. Engel, wrote in the opinion that the Defense of Marriage Act has no bearing on Social Security benefits for children.

The OLC’s deputy, Steven A. Engel, wrote in the opinion that the Defense of Marriage Act has no bearing on Social Security benefits for children. “Although DOMA limits the definition of ‘marriage’ and ‘spouse’ for purposes of federal law, the Social Security Act does not condition eligibility for [child insurance benefits] on the existence of a marriage or on the federal rights of a spouse in the circumstances of this case.”

How many days before this one gets a new bill rushed through Congress to stop providing this benefit to children?

Transgender booted from gay dating Web site

Boston-area((hyphenated)) single Nick Teich created an account on the social networking site Bisexual Dating Now. In his profile, he identified himself as a female-to-male transgender and within a few hours was getting responses. But an undisclosed technical problem with the site led Teich to call for assistance. That’s when things went surreal.

Teich’s profile was deleted because the company said it did not have any online forum for transgenders and because Teich had signed into the network as a lesbian on the lesbian network. Customer service representative Kiar Dupuis said all the sites are linked, and once a person signs up in one area, gay male, lesbian or bisexual, they are tracked from that profile. Men, Dupuis said, were never allowed to join the lesbian site.

Fromthe Boston gay newspaper Bay Windows, here is the company’s take on the issue:

BisexualDatingNow.com is owned by the Seattle-based company TangoWire, which owns a network of personals sites catering to a range of interests, from the LGB community to different racial and ethnic communities to motorcycle enthusiasts. An FAQ section of the BisexualDatingNow.com site describes TangoWire as a gay-owned and -operated company: “TangoWire was founded by, is directed by, and is run by gay personnel. We don’t discriminate against our straight co-workers — they’re cool people, too, and just as committed to your great experience on our site.”

Prior to transitioning from female to male, Teich had joined one of TangoWire’s lesbian sites but hadn’t been an active user. When he registered with BisexualDatingNow.com, he assumed it was a completely new site but, in fact, the profiles for both sites are linked to one massive database, meaning that someone on one of the bisexual sites could view the profile of a member of one of the lesbian sites. One of Dupuis’ e-mails to Teich accused him of trying to force his way onto the lesbian site.

“We do not have a site appropriate for transgenders. You joined our lesbian site, which is not your sexual preference. You then listed yourself as a bisexual man. This is absolutely a violation of our community rules because we do not allow any man on a lesbian site,” wrote Dupuis. “You are NOT a lesbian therefore you cannot and will not be a part of our lesbian community.”

Female-to-male transman gives birth to live baby

Nope, this is not a headline from The National Enquirer, this is the real deal. Thomase Beattie who made international news when he announced he was pregnant, gave birth to a healthy baby girl, The Advocate, a national gay magazine is reporting.

Beattie ended up a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show, where he said, “I feel it’s not a male or female desire to have a child. It’s a human need. I’m a person and I have the right to have a biological child.”

No word yet on whether The American Family Association will launch a boycott of the hospital where Beattie’s child was born.

“We can bring healing and hope to many more. So I ask you to maintain the principles that have changed behavior and made this program a success,” the President said. “And I call on you to double our initial commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS by approving an additional $30 billion over the next five years.”(http://www.nationalp…)

Currently the federal government spends $2.06 billion annually on fighting the disease in the Unites States. ( http://nhpf.ags.com/…)

The current funding covers nearly 550,000 people, providing access to HIV antiviral medications and other necessary medical treatment.

Five years ago, the President asked for and received $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa, and according to the White House website, that money has helped 10 million people. (http://www.whitehous…)

An estimated 17,000 Michigan residents know they are infected with HIV, and 900 more will test positive for HIV this year, predicts the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH). Yet the agency also estimates that less than 40 percent of the population is getting tested for the virus, and 25 percent of people infected with HIV in the state do not know they have it.

But the MDCH has failed to implement federal guidelines that could help detect HIV infection. Earlier detection leads to healthier lives for people who are HIV positive and decreases the likelihood they will spread the virus, say experts — including the MDCH. An MDCH policy statement issued last March cites three studies that show many HIV-positive individuals who had medical checkups were not diagnosed with HIV until years after they were infected. 

The failure to get broader testing led the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to recommend in September 2006 that HIV testing become part of the standard physical for all people ages 13-64. The CDC wants testing to be required unless a patient specifically says he or she doesn’t want to be tested.

The MDCH opposes the implementation of the CDC recommendations, however.

Continued -
  “We feel (the CDC recommendations) can be implemented successfully in the state without changing the law,” said Debra Szwedja, acting director of the MDCH’s Division of Health, Wellness and Disease Control.

Current Michigan law allows HIV testing be done only with informed consent, meaning patients are required to sign a consent form, and the medical personnel giving the test have to inform patients that the HIV tests will be done, inform them about their rights as patients and tell them to whom the test results can be made available. State law mandates that testing locations also must provide a copy of the booklet “Important Health Information,” which was created by the state and distributed by the MDCH. 

Szwedja said another obstacle to universal testing for HIV is the current third-party-payer insurance system. Some insurance policies will not cover routine HIV testing. To be covered, the test must be used as a diagnostic tool. But to qualify as a diagnostic test, a patient already must have symptoms of HIV infection.

Szwedja was quick to add that free testing is available at every county health department in the state, and that the MDCH has funded 20 test sites to perform HIV testing. “Anyone wanting an HIV test can walk into their county health department and get a free HIV test,” Szwedja said.

While the state continues to encourage medical facilities to do HIV testing, without eliminating the informed-consent procedures, it has shown significant success using this model with a specific risk group: pregnant women.

Under Michigan law, all women are to be counseled about HIV and encouraged to be tested for the virus as part of routine prenatal care. This process has helped to reduce the number of cases of HIV transmission from mother to child. In fact, the AIDS Fund Report Card on HIV/AIDS in Michigan, issued last week, gives the state an A for this category of prevention.

While experts debate over how and if to make HIV testing a routine part of annual physicals in Michigan, those who are at high risk for HIV infection offer many reasons for not getting tested.

“I don’t get tested for HIV because I quit having sex — case closed,” said one 23-year-old gay man from Lansing.

In Michigan, men who have sex with men represent 47 percent of all cases of HIV or AIDS, according to statistics from the state Department of Community Health.

Experts in HIV/AIDS say there are many barriers to HIV testing. Among those cited by experts from the Lansing Area AIDS Network and Midwest AIDS Prevention Project are stigma and fear, location of testing sites, and a perception of not being at risk for HIV.

Michigan Messenger asked self-identified gay and bisexual men in an anonymous chat room on gay.com whether they got tested or not and why they made their choices. Because the answers deal with specific health information and in some cases HIV status, the men interviewed are identified only by age, location and sexual orientation.

Continued -Perhaps the most extensive response came from a 28-year-old from Ypsilanti. This gay man is in a long-term relationship; however, he has had sexual encounters outside that relationship.

“I guess that’s why I’m nervous about going (for testing). I feel like I should,” he said. “I don’t want him to know I do this (have sex outside the relationship), so that’s why I’m also scared.”

“I just don’t want to find out maybe that I have something that would endanger his life,” he continued.  “The fear is what keeps me from really knowing.”

He also said the expectation that gay men routinely get tested played a role in his decision-making.

“It’s portrayed as something you ‘have to do,’ and I think a lot of people are against things that they have to do in order to be sure that you’re not going to be sentenced to having to use drugs to stay healthy for the rest of your life,” he said. “If you do have it, what happens next? There is no real answer thereafter of how you deal with what comes up if you are positive.”

But for a 44-year-old bisexual from Garden City, testing is not an issue. “I don’t have HIV, and I am not going to get it,” the man said. “End of discussion.”

Others, however, say testing is a regular event in their lives. A 22-year-old gay man from Lansing, who said he drove to Ferndale every six months because the test site offers rapid results, explained it was the right thing to do “because I’m a responsible adult.”

And a 31-year-old gay man from Grand Rapids said, “Hello? Every six months just to be on the safe side.”

Finally, a 55-year-old man from Lansing said he does not get checked at all because “I am already poz (positive).” He said he tested positive in 1989.
]]> http://michiganmessenger.com/506/from-cheating-to-denial-gay-men-reveal-why-they-avoid-hiv-testing/feed 1 http://michiganmessenger.com/500/experts-say-stigma-tops-list-of-barriers-to-hiv-testing http://michiganmessenger.com/500/experts-say-stigma-tops-list-of-barriers-to-hiv-testing#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:40:19 +0000 Todd A. Heywood http://www.michiganmessenger.com.php5-9.websitetestlink.com/?p=500 This is the second story in a four piece series exploring HIV testing and AIDS in Michigan.

There are many barriers to people getting tested for HIV, but the human factors — stigma and fear — top the list, health experts say.

“There is still a lot of fear and prejudice and discrimination,” said Kaye McDuffie, early intervention coordinator for the Lansing Area AIDS Network.  “People have actually made an assessment of their community or family support system, and they have determined that no one would be there for them if they had HIV disease. So, without a diagnosis, they are able to maintain a fragile support system.”

The first installment of this series reviewed the September 2006 recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to expand HIV testing to all routine medical care for people ages 13-64. However, many medical facilities are not following the CDC guidelines, and state law may be part of the problem. This leaves the issue of HIV testing in the hands of the numerous HIV/AIDS service organizations around the state.

Besides the stigma that can be attached to an HIV diagnosis, McDuffie said other barriers to testing include where testing is provided, perceptions that the testing costs money, the times when testing is available, and people not perceiving themselves to be at risk for HIV infection.

Continued -McDuffie also cited what she called a “backlash” to effective treatment. “One of the drawbacks (of the new drugs) especially among young people is that they think it is no big deal (to test HIV positive),” she said.

A report card on state progress against AIDS,  released last week by the Michigan AIDS Fund,  also noted the lack of effective education about HIV transmission as one of the state’s failures.  “A lack of effective HIV prevention education contributes to our lack of progress in slowing the epidemic,” the report stated.

Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Project and a contributor to the AIDS Fund report card, said a variety of reasons may keep doctors from testing for HIV.

  “They may not be comfortable talking about risk behaviors, or they may assume a patient is not at risk, without having that discussion,” Kaplan said. He said doctors reflect the same prejudices as  other members of society.

Kaplan and McDuffie both support keeping the informed-consent law as it is in the state of Michigan.

  “We know that there is something about this (testing HIV positive) that leads to discrimination,” Kaplan said.

For McDuffie, the issue is helping people stay HIV negative. “I feel if there is not time to do some sort of assessment to let the patient know what is putting them at risk, they can’t develop an effective strategy to eliminate risks,” she said.

Jihannh Jones, program coordinator for the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project, concurred  with McDuffie.

“If you are talking to someone about HIV and you want them to stay negative, you have to have that conversation with them,” Jones said.
]]> http://michiganmessenger.com/500/experts-say-stigma-tops-list-of-barriers-to-hiv-testing/feed 2 http://michiganmessenger.com/494/report-michigan-fails-to-make-aids-tests-routine http://michiganmessenger.com/494/report-michigan-fails-to-make-aids-tests-routine#comments Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:01:57 +0000 Todd A. Heywood http://www.michiganmessenger.com.php5-9.websitetestlink.com/?p=494 First of a four-part series on AIDS in Michigan.

More than a year after the federal government changed HIV guidelines to recommend testing for everyone ages 13-64 as part of a yearly physical, the Michigan AIDS Fund has released a report card claiming the state has failed at making such testing routine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta changed its HIV testing recommendation in September 2006. Until then, the CDC recommended testing only for those in high-risk groups such as men who have sex with men or intravenous drug users.

But “there continues to be far too little routine HIV testing in medical settings,” the AIDS Fund said Thursday in the introduction to its report card. The fund was formed to help distribute private and public grants to fight HIV.

In the section evaluating HIV prevention in the state, the report goes further: “We have failed to make routine testing and screening for HIV a routine part of medical care, missing an important opportunity to identify infected individuals and linking them to critical care and support services.”

Continued -The report, compiled by state AIDS service organizations, gives the state a B- for care and treatment options, a B- for funding, a C for HIV prevention and a C in public policy work on HIV/AIDS.

The federal recommendation to expand testing was made in part because a growing body of medical literature shows early detection and intervention for those with HIV leads to a better health prognosis. The report cites numerous new HIV drugs on the market that are generally very effective in slowing the progress of the infection and delaying or preventing the onset of AIDS.

The 27-page report also recommended:

• Eliminating mandatory pre- and post-test counseling
• Making HIV tests routine unless a person opts out of the process
• Requiring testing only from health-care providers, not from AIDS service organizations that offer confidential or anonymous HIV testing.

“I believe in the CDC recommendations,” said Kaye McDuffie, early-intervention coordinator for the Lansing Area AIDS Network. But her support is only for increased testing, not for the report’s other recommendations. “I feel that if there is not time to do some sort of assessment to let the patient know what he/she is doing [that] is putting them at risk, then they can’t develop effective strategies to eliminate risks.”

Jihannh Jones, program coordinator and HIV test counselor for the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project, echoed McDuffie.

“I don’t agree with” not requiring pre- and post-test counseling, Jones said. “You never know what a client is going through. You need to know what is in their past. I think that is very important.”

However, opt-out testing may not be a choice in Michigan. State law requires all people being tested for HIV must be told in advance about the test and must sign a consent form. The law also requires anyone seeking HIV testing be counseled about HIV risks and prevention.

The call to recommend pre- and post-test counseling was made in part to alleviate concerns expressed by the medical community, the CDC report said. Medical professionals expressed concerns about having frank conversations on sexual behavior with their patients, as well as concerns that the average doctor did not have time for counseling because of time constraints placed on them by managed-care programs.

Watch Michigan Messenger for Part 2 in this series, covering barriers to HIV testing.

Remember World AIDS Day on December 1; find HIV testing locations near you.
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