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HIV outbreak on Alaska Army base rattles public health officialsTwo potentially deadly disease outbreaks in Alaska have public health officials on edge, particularly at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks. State epidemiologists issued public health bulletins Tuesday to alert everyone in Alaska to outbreaks of syphilis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the disease that if untreated can cause AIDS. Since January 2011, newly-reported cases of HIV in Fairbanks have more than doubled, according to Susan Jones, Alaska's HIV/STD program manager. In any given year, between two and four new cases are reported in Fairbanks. Last year, they spiked, with at least nine individuals newly diagnosed as HIV positive. Statewide, between 20 and 40 newly-acquired and newly-reported cases of HIV/AIDS are reported to public health officials most years, Jones said. But in 2010, the last year official numbers were reported, there were 77 cases reported: 38 people who'd been infected that year, and 39 people who'd been previously diagnosed HIV positive, possibly elsewhere, but who were new to Alaska. "If you look at the total numbers for 2011, we really haven't increased the overall state numbers at all. You really have to break down the numbers" to find the Fairbanks outbreak, Jones said. A few things stand out about it:
"An increase of nine is certainly cause for us to look at," Brandi Ostanik, a spokesperson for Medical Activity Alaska (MEDDAC-AK), the military's umbrella health-care organization here. "In 2010, for Fairbanks and Fort Wainwright, there were only three (newly-reported) cases of HIV/AIDS." Online 'hookups' account for most new HIV casesIn post-diagnosis interviews with public health officials who track HIV infections, the patients answered questions about sexual activity and partners. Eight of the new patients acknowledged having high-risk, unprotected and/or anonymous sex with random partners. Jones said Craigslist and Adam4Adam were the two most-cited websites used in Alaska to cruise for anonymous hookups. The first generation of HIV/AIDS patients, whether men or women, often contracted the illness by sharing syringes, having sex with prostitutes or, for men who have sex with other men, at public bath houses. Today's generation of HIV-positive people overwhelmingly hook up online, anonymously, Jones said. And that poses another problem for public health professionals on the front lines, attempting to stop disease from spreading. "It's very difficult for us to track and notify" everyone who is exposed to HIV online, Jones said. "Anonymous sex partners are people (patients) don't know very well. Or sometimes they don't want to tell us" about all of the partners who may have been exposed. "We simply don't know how many people in Alaska have been exposed and are infected and are not aware," she said. Another problem: newly-positive men and women are more infectious in months immediately after contracting the virus. The sheer quantity of virus in a newly-positive person's blood can increase likelihood of transmitting HIV to others. Fairbanks' HIV spike in 2011 and 2012 appears to come from those recently infected. That could mean greater potential for "increased transmission as persons with acute HIV infection often have higher (viral loads)." The virus has evolved since its discovery in the early 1980s. Whereas early HIV patients might have lived 10 years without showing a single symptom of illness, today's virus can be even deadlier, depleting a person's immune system on a much faster timeline and leading to an AIDS diagnosis. Health risks can grow when newly-positive people continue engaging in unsafe sex and contract another strain of the virus. This can then potentially spread so-called "superinfections," some of which may be resistant to the medications credited with transforming HIV/AIDS from deadly epidemic to manageable chronic illness.
You have to wonder, After all the training lectures and classes on safe sex the military puts its members through how is it that this happens? How is it that the member (pardon the pun) who turns up HIV positive is not court martialed? Are these soldiers going to get treatment paid for by the military and Veterans administration for the rest of their lives? At tax payer expense? I would like to preface my comment with the words of Jesus: Thank you Eric for taking the time in addressing my concerns. While I agree with your description of this particular cluster of infections, it is of up most importance for public health authorities in Alaska to know that HIV is not some 'gay disease,' and everyone heterosexual or homosexual is at risk of infection. This is not some abstraction, but a fact been laid out through abundant research and statistical analysis, as well as my own personal experience as a medical social worker that worked with both homosexual and heterosexual men and women who are HIV positive. To drive this point home I will provide anecdotes. One of the individuals I work with was a young girl in her early teens. Another was a middle age women searching out married men to have sex with for the purpose of intentionally spreading the disease. In her mind she was getting back at the man who infected her who was also a married man. That man had infected many other women as well as his wife. Also, internationally HIV is an overwhelmingly heterosexually transmitted infection, an example of this is how in sub-Saharan Africa many nations have a percentage of the population HIV positive in excess of 20% or more. Mr. Wheeler, you sound like a bitter closeted gay man, who hides behind his religious and extremist judgements in a vain attempt to hide who he really is. Closet cases such as yourself, are at substantially greater risk of contracting and also spreading HIV to your wife, because your rigid self-hatred and internalized homophobia prevents you from making rational sexual decisions or preparations in and for the heat of the moment. Please also note, that sexuality is a part of human nature that evolved over billions of years. People will have sex no matter what the consequences, the only difference is that in environments where sexuality, in all its diverse expressions, is forbidden, people have sex under the table and in the closet, just like you Mr. Wheeler. Environments where sexuality is suppressed have the highest level of new infections. This especially true in America where religiosity and the relative number of churches per person is directly related to the number of new infections. In short, the ultra-conservative Southern States are by far leading the country in new HIV infections and unwed pregnancies despite the hypocritical 'family values' they publicly espouse. Public health officials and people in general need to understand that what people say they do in bed is almost never the same as what they actually do. The most effective way of dealing with this issue is through sexual education, prophylaxis, and and testing. It is also important to note that, that the new model of 'test and treat' is also very effective in curtailing HIV infections since treated people on proper medication are almost statistically incapable of passing the virus. Prophylactically, the CDC has suggested that the HIV drug Truvada when taken before an exposure to HIV can provide protection from actually contracting the virus as well. To end, when sex is not stigmatized, when public health officials and institutions do their jobs in educating people in how to protect themselves, and condoms are provided, especially free of charge, there are less HIV infections. If you have questions about how you can protect yourself or need a non-judgmental person to talk to I can be found at www.facebook.com/kevinandkolewelsh Wear a Rubber, I find your comments, Ms. Welch, less reprehensible than I do the disgusting responses by Mr. Wheeler, but disturbing all the same. I share your feeling that Wheeler's comments are rather bizarre, but you have no basis for definitively stating that he is a "closet" homosexual. The point is its sexual activity outside of the sanctity of a true marriage. Meaning staying a virgin till married and NEVER having sex except to try for children. Homo or Hetro sex is sex, and as such a sin, and as such sexual disease a result of that sin. That amoral choice results in danger to the common good in that it spreads to anyone trying to help those afflicted by this. Be it a soldier on the battlefield (or training grounds) needing a medic and that medic is now infected for being exposed to their blood or worse. Or someone afflicted with this disease protested for their choices and infecting the public by spitting in their face or spreading their blood on a crowd they oppose. There is a reason this lifestyle in other parts of the world are isolated, condemned, or wrongfully destroyed. Only here in America are we foolish and naive enough to embrace it and raise such lifestyle choices above all others. If men were still STONED to death for committing adultery, we would not have this type of outbreak. So to if Women didnt open their legs outside of marriage. But no we are a sexual based society now. Look how evolved we are!!! Look at the rampant overpopulation, and throw away marriage vows. Look at all the abandoned unwanted children & struggling single mothers. And all the Diseases we have made for ourselves. This is what our society has cultivated & coveted for many generations. Its a shame the innocent pay the price for the choices made by those that came before. But in the end perhaps this is the reason moral lifestyles are so hated. THEY will endure and survive. Yours will not. Is this tragic? Absolutely! Is it deserved? Probably not. Is it avoidable? YES! Keep it in your pants! Wow. How simple... If only a generation before tried to warn you about that... OH THATS RIGHT! WE DID! The stupidity of the previous commentator is undoubtedly shared by a minority of readers as well as the writer of this salacious piece of fiction. How funny it is that the author choose to make cliche references to the seventies era bathhouses and justapose them against online dating sites used by men who have sex with men in a vain attempt to castigate perceived 'promiscuity.' The reality is that the vast majority of new HIV infections occur as a result heterosexual contact. Dont believe me? Look up HIV on the CDC, World Health Organization, or wikipedia websites. In the drive to condemn 'those dirty homosexual,' the writer of this piece seems to overlooked this fact. Wait a minute. Your position is that this is an education problem? These soldiers have been getting safe sex lectures since they were in grade school both systematically and through PSA's. They have been submerged in education on the subject while in the military. While they do deserve sympathy for their plight and our best wishes for their treatment and hopefully someday cure, they certainly don't deserve our "deepest sympathy". These adult, competent, autonomous individuals willingly and knowingly chose to engage in sexual behavior with an increased risk of infection by any number of STD's. Given how easy it is to take basic precautions that lower that risk astronomically, to almost statistically insignificant levels, and given that they freely chose -not- to, there is no "tragedy" here, except perhaps classical hubris in thinking "it won't happen to me". They didn't "deserve" to get infected but they practically followed the checklist of a person who actually wanted to be infected (unprotected sex with multiple random partners). I will save my deep sympathy for folks who get the disease while following the well-known and mostly convenient (compared with getting any STD) practices to avoid infection and my deepest sympathies for those people in committed relationships where trust should be safe to assume who are infected by partners who deliberately engage in risky behavior without informing them. Every competent individual is ultimately solely responsible for their own well-being. When they deliberately choose to abrogate that responsibility there is no moral or ethical problem with noting their own involvement in the reasonably foreseeable outcome. "in Fairbanks... with at least nine individuals newly diagnosed as HIV positive." "Seven of the newly-infected patients were connected in some way to the military" "Gay or bisexual men account for all but one of the new cases" It appears to me that gay men connected with the military are the ones who should be concerned. The military has preached about HIV and STD's since forever. Anyone who has served knows this. Thanks for reading, Kolewelsh. The "cliche" you refer to was one offered by the state's HIV/STD program manager to illustrate how the virus currently spreads. In Alaska. No doubt it's not universally applicable. Your point on the soaring rate of heterosexual HIV transmission also is a valid one. However, that's not the case in this instance or for that matter in Alaska. As with most trends -- be they social, economic or epidemiological, Alaska lags behind the continental U.S. And this story is about an Alaska "outbreak" -- as the state identified it -- in its public health bulletin (see attachment to story). Regardless of 'don't ask, don't tell,' men will have sex with men and women, and women will have sex with men and women. No policy or policymaker anywhere will likely ever be able to change that, and certainly not in the U.S. There's no place in this story for any commentary or moral platitudes on human sexuality. Live and let live, I say. I will add that the U.S. military is likely the most efficient, well managed and socially integrated institution in the world. It also is the most inclusive and least tolerant of societal discrimination (they do discriminate based on physical limitations). These are good things and no doubt contribute to the nation's overwhelming support for it as a pillar of our society. Cheers! You can't be serious, Eric, when you wrote: "(T)he U.S. military is likely the most efficient, well managed and socially integrated institution in the world. It also is the most inclusive and least tolerant of societal discrimination." The US marine corps has discharged the lone marine convicted in the 2005 killings of unarmed Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha. Former sergeant Frank Wuterich ended his service on Friday. Wuterich's attorney said that the corps gave him a general discharge under honorable conditions — one step below an honorable discharge. Wuterich had his rank reduced to private as part of a deal that abruptly ended his manslaughter court martial and spared him imprisonment. (He) Contrast that story with this one: "Bradley Manning was arraigned today on 22 counts (for releasing the truth about the Haditha massacre and hundreds of similar incidents). He faces life in prison." Or this: In Afghanistan, his fellow soldiers "pulled Private Danny Chen out of bed and dragged him across the floor; they forced him to crawl on the ground while they pelted him with rocks and taunted him with ethnic slurs. It was the culmination of what the family called a campaign of hazing against Private Chen, 19, who was born in Chinatown in Manhattan, the son of Chinese immigrants. Hours later, he was found dead in a guard tower, from what a military statement on Wednesday called 'an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound' to the head." How about this? For decades, Mikey Weinstein discovered, evangelical para-church organizations had cropped up with the sole purpose of evangelizing service members. One group, Campus Crusade for Christ's Military Ministry, described the service members that come under its sway as "government-paid missionaries for Christ." At Fort Jackson in South Carolina, Military Ministry snapped pictures of soldiers posing with their rifles and their Bibles, an image eerily similar to jihadist propaganda videos. The same soldiers participated in Bible studies where one outline asked "Can a Christian Soldier Kill?" "NO to murder, YES to killing," the outline declared, because the soldier was god's "angel of wrath," punishing evil. Inside the Military Police building at Fort Riley, a printout slapped on an office door carried conservative columnist Ann Coulter's sunken face and this quote: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." A more subtle evangelical hubris also appeared inside the Pentagon. In 2007, MRFF's discovery of nine Pentagon officials appearing in a promotional video for Campus Crusade's Christian Embassy caused the Department of Defense's inspector general to rebuke seven military officers. So my question, Eric, is "What planet have you been living on?" This is what happens with tolerance. Sad, sad statistic, butt (pun intended) they, the military, are now "Asexually Correct" |
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