Topic: Dittohead Dogma
New AIDS discovery met with fear but little shock
By Richard Perez-Pena And Marc Santora
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
NEW YORK - As news spread of a rare and deadlier form of AIDS, communities already hard-hit by the disease reacted with fear and skepticism but little surprise, given that the sense of urgency about the disease had waned.
"They should have been doing more teaching about safe sex and the virus itself, the seriousness of it," said Albert Wright, 59, who is HIV-positive and lives at a treatment center in East New York, Brooklyn. "I'm afraid for the public. People probably have it and don't know that they have it."
City health officials announced Friday that they had detected a rare strain of HIV that is resistant to virtually all anti-retroviral drugs and appears to have led to the rapid onset of AIDS in a New York City man. That combination, the officials said, could signal a new, more menacing strain of the virus, and it set in motion an anxious search by city workers to find the man's sexual partners and have them tested.
Those who specialize in HIV treatment and prevention were particularly focused on news that the more virulent infection had appeared in a man who used methamphetamine during extended episodes of unprotected sex with multiple partners. It is a pattern experts have seen repeatedly in recent years.
Yesterday at the Big Cup, a popular coffee shop in Manhattan, the customers, most of them gay men, all talked about how the fear of AIDS had declined, especially among a younger generation that did not have the searing experience of watching friends die. Some said they feared that a new strain of the disease might have emerged, but none were surprised, given the prevailing attitude.
"People got so comfortable with the drugs that they have started becoming complacent," said Will Elosei, 37, from Jersey City. Now, he said: "I think people are going to be more paranoid about everything."
Among people who deal with HIV, the response was tinged with caution, with many saying it was too soon to say whether the single infection reported in New York was truly something new.
"We need better characterization of the virus in this man," said Dr. Marcus Conant, a professor at the medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. "What does it look like genetically?"
But he added: "All of us have been expecting for some time there would be the multidrug resistance. This virus has mutated around what we've thrown at it."
