The following is an excerpt of a posting in a forum about HIV issues. The original posting was from a man who was infected in a "monogamous" relationship. The man had been infected by his partner, who was positive, and lied over several years, while they had unprotected sex. Personally, I find that kind of lie morally repulsive, and probably criminal. Many notes echoed the following sentiments:

"YOU chose to have unprotected sex. Regardless of the fact that he was your boyfriend in a 'supposed' monogamous relationship or that he lied, you still chose.
I tell you, everyone needs to take accountability for their own actions. It's not about who lied to you, it's about what you allowed. It's your body. If you don't want HIV or STI's, then don't bareback, regardless of it being a partner monogamously or not. If you're willing to accept the possible risks, then do what you want as long as you don't come crying later.
Yes, to most everyone, it's a criminal thing to keep going around and infecting others, but those people are somewhat just as stupid for 'believing' him in the fact that he says he's negative and having bareback sex due to believing him. I just don't understand why it's ALWAYS the poz guy's fault. EVERYONE takes accountability.
And there's always Karma. You keep doing evil things, something big is gonna back to bite ya. And for the things i've seen, it always has come back 10 fold, so i tend not to worry about those people. I worry more about the people who don't think with their heads appropriately.

I find it really funny in the online world too where people will ask status of someone (after claiming to want bareback sex) and that someone will be honest either saying, yes they are poz or that they are neg from their last test but that's only as good as the last test and they bareback, so truthfully, one could claim they don't know for sure. The other guy will say, "well, i don't want to take the chance if you don't know", yet he'll believe others so easily that say they're neg.
Fools, i say. This is the way it's been and always will be. Some get caught, some don't and we wish they would. In the end, REALLY, we have to take accountability for ourselves.
I refuse to play the blame game. I made my own choices, i knew exactly what the possible outcomes & consequences were."

Everyone is responsible for their own health, but nobody is absolved of the responsiblity to avoiding another person, even if that person makes a foolish choice.

He must be........or he wouldn't do that/be here.

I keep hearing this one: Went to the baths, had unsafe sex. The negative guys think, "damn, he's hot, doesn't look sick, no reason to worry." Poz guys think, "If he were not poz already, he wouldn't be in the baths with his butt in the air and the door wide open.

Ask. Tell.

This quiet misunderstanding is leading to lots of new infections. You can't tell by looking. You can't guess by risk taking or geography.

Dealing with it

I found this written on another chat list, and thought it was so good that I asked the writer, Brian, if I migh post it here.

"The "eroticizing" of HIV has become much more pronounced in the last 5-7 years. For some, the premeditated act of potentially giving or receiving the virus heightens sexual pleasure for them. They go around using terms like "breeding" and "seeding", getting guys "pregnant" etc...as if this act links these men in some sort of unbroken bond. A brotherhood of sorts. I don't claim to understand it, but those are the facts.

Another fact, however, is one that footlicker alluded to in his original post: the reality of living with the disease. For these men, the idea of "acquiring" the disease seems to be the focus without any regard for the actual "possession" of it. In other words they seek it out as fantasy but most times are not prepared for the realistic damage it causes to their bodies, psyche, or lives. I hear talk of a sense of "freedom" that these men think the infection will bring them in terms of sexual behavior, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Here is the truth:

There isn't such thing as freedom in relation to this disease. You are a prisoner to medications. You are a prisoner to public perception to the disease itself. You are a prisoner of doctor visits, potential opportunistic infections, and therapy failure due to resistance issue. We don't even need to talk about the fact that your risk of dying from cancers, heart disease and stroke increases dramatically post infection. Oh, and shortened life span kind of puts a damper on things as well.

Rather than the world opening up for you sexually, be prepared to spend more time in the fantasy of having sex rather than the actual act itself because the overwhelming majority of the world DON'T want the infection you worked so hard to get, and will in most cases avoid that type of contact with you. Just look around this forum. How many men have posted here discussing their struggles regarding relationships, sex partners, difficulty finding love and acceptance, and of course fear of disclosure regarding their status? Now that you so proudly and actively sought out the disease, do you intend to trumpet your success in getting it to everyone you meet? I doubt it.

THAT is the reality of this disease. Not so glamorous after all is it?"

So, it's really pretty simple to avoid HIV infection.

First, safer sexy, every time. This includes "topping." Giving blow jobs does have a measurable, if small, risk of HIV infection.

Second, managing the number of sexual partners. It's just like lotto. The more tickets you buy, the more likely you are to "win." If you seek out places like sex clubs and hook up a lot on line, you are probably meeting people who do the same....and when you sleep with one person, you are sleeping with their full sexual history.

Third, avoid behaviors that make you take chances: drugs and alcohol.

Those are real steps that will help you.

It's worse than I thought!

I've now reviewed the papers on HIV false negatives in sexually active gay men.

The conclusions are a bit alarming. Sexually active gay men in an STD clinic were tested for HIV RNA, which is a test for the virus itself, as opposed to most tests, which look for antibodies against the virus.

In these sexually active men, 10% of those who tested negative for antibodies against HIV were positive for RNA tests. This means that they were recently infected, highly infectious, but had a recent negative HIV test.

New HIV tests which use both RNA and antibodies are coming, very soon, but for now, if you meet men on line, a negative test could have an error rate of 10%.

For sexually active gay men, false negatives are a real issue.

Positive RNA tests

Almost all laboratory tests used to screen for HIV use antibody tests. These tests are very reliable and affordable for huge numbers of people, and make screening of large numbers of people possible, without eating up a fortune in precious health-care dollars.

There is the famous "Window Period" problem though. When the virus first infects a person, it spreads and replicates throughout the body. It takes a few weeks for most people to have made measureable amounts of antibody, so if someone was infected a week ago, they may have sky-high levels of infectious virus in their blood, but they will test "negative" for HIV antibodies.

At STD clinics in New York and Seattle, investigators have tested HIV tests that don't look for antibodies, but for the virus itself. Tests done on people who had a HIGH risk exposure, i.e. unprotected anal sex were tested. About 2% of gay men who tested negative with antibody tests were positive for RNA tests.

These men were acutely infected, and probably very contagious, but they could put "HIV Negative, as of today" in their on-line profile, in all honesty.

RNA tests are good for picking up acute infection in men with a high risk encounter, but are not good for screening the general population. In this case, though, they show that when someone says they are negative, there is a real chance, albeit small that they are wrong.

Party Invite!?

So, out of the blue, I get an invitation to one of those "special parties." It sounds very hot, so I send in my info.

I get an enthusiastic response, saying there will be around 50 men there for a house party on Miami Beach. The host suggests that all will be seronegative, and all attending should be.

I wrote him back to ask if he really thought he could find a group of genuinely seronegative men in South Beach. He replied that condoms were provided, and encouraged.

If you're going to answer like that, what's the point of asking HIV positive men not to attend?