Petrelis Files

SYPHILIS AND A GAY MEN'S HEALTH BILL OF RIGHTS

Minutes from the San Francisco health commission’s Population Health and Prevention committee reveal a new plan is in the works to deal with the syphilis crisis in the city.

The secretary of the committee, Jimmy Loyce, director of the health department’s AIDS Office, made the following presentation at the committee’s February 25 meeting.

“On January 8, 2003, an all day meeting was held to develop a ‘syphilis reduction plan’. The Group [sic] suggested that the STD program focus on the following priority areas over the next year:

“- Enhancing STD surveillance and expanding clinical/lab services in both clinical and community based settings;

“- Increasing health promotion activities, including targeting health providers, creating messages that focus on prevention and standards of care for gay men’s health and expanding our internet [sic] outreach in gay chat rooms;

“- Developing a gay men’s Health Bill of Rights; and

“- Creating a Community Advocacy/Press Committee.

“The STD Program is planning to release a Plan [sic], as a collaborative endeavor between the STD Program and various community groups prior to STD Awareness Month in April.” [1]

While it is great to learn that such an all day planning session was held back in January, there’s been effort to inform the community that it took place and provide community members with more information about what was on the agenda, who was invited and lots more details about what was discussed. If the health department made a better effort to keep the community up to date about such things, I bet the gay and mainstream press would report on the efforts, thereby increasing awareness, and community involvement in fighting syphilis transmissions.

Regarding the expansion of the department’s invasion of gay chat rooms, I’d like to know what scientific evidence the department has in hand to prove that such outreach effectively reduces unsafe sex practices and syphilis rates. I acknowledge not supporting such outreach to gay men cruising the web for sexual partners, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the city. Gay men deserve private sexual spaces, including on the web, that are not subjected to the preying eyes of health officials who are doing a terrible job of controlling and preventing HIV and STDs.

I wholly support the notion of a gay men’s Health Bill of Rights, but I wonder why such a bill is necessary in San Francisco at this point in time. Is the health department admitting gay men are not respected in the local health care system and that our medical and civil rights need protecting with such a bill? I wish the minutes provided more background information about this basically good idea.

If the health department is establishing another community advocacy committee related to syphilis and gay men, can we be sure the usual suspects from AIDS Inc and the HIV prevention mafia won’t be in charge and/or dominating it? There have been far too many community advisory boards and panels that are nothing more than front groups for powerbrokers already in control of disease prevention, and operating ineffective programs. We need community members who aren’t on the AIDS Inc payroll running advisory committees, if the health department is serious about getting more citizens to own syphilis prevention campaigns.

The promise to release the plan before the start of STD Awareness Month is another broken commitment from the department. If the plan does exist, why hasn’t the department posted it on their web site?

The health department has its work cut for it, especially in light of this letter appearing in today’s edition of the Bay Area Reporter.

“I’m now certain that it’s not just my taste, and the ‘Healthy Penis’ campaign really is stupid. Math is not a matter of opinion. The campaign’s ad in the March 27 B.A.R. proclaims, ‘The number of syphilis cases has increased 1000 percent from 55 cases in 1999 to 494 cases in 2002.’ That would be 798 percent, not 1000 percent.

“Would be. The actual figures from the S.F. Public Health Department’s Web site www.dph.sf.ca.us/Reports/HlthAssess.htm show 122 syphilis cases for 1999, and 595 cases for 2002.

“That 388 percent increase is frightening enough without exaggerating or lying about it. But what can you expect from the team that expensively plastered those artless, amateurish, adolescent cartoons all over town?

“This growing health crisis requires accurate, smart, sex-affirming public education. It’s time for the health department to ditch the dumb cartoons and allocate whatever scarce funding remains to a new and wiser team of health educators.” [2]

The letter is from Randy Alfred, and bully for him for stating what I and many other gay sex activist think about the current syphilis control and prevention social marketing campaigns saturating the gay community and our sexual venues.

Alfred’s letter reminds me of a column a few years ago by Patricia Nell Warren in Arts & Understanding AIDS magazine. Warren questioned some alarming statistics from CDC HIV epidemiologists that were generating scary stories in the press. She called up Dr. Ron Valdiserri, a top HIV prevention expert at the CDC in Atlanta, to get his views about the questions being raised about the HIV statistics. He dismissed the questions as mere quibbles, but Warren rightly pointed out that gay men know how to use calculators and will try to make sense of alarming HIV statistics from the CDC. Just as Alfred has done with San Francisco’s syphilis numbers.

It will be interesting to see if and how the health responds to Alfred’s letter and valid concerns.

Sources:
1. http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/Meetings/PHP/Minutes/JCCPHPM02252003.pdf, Page 2
2. Bay Area Reporter, April 17, 2003. BAR does not have a web site.