Petrelis Files

ZERO RECENT HIV INFECTIONS IN S.F.; AN APPEAL TO WSJ'S WALDHOLZ

Dear Mike:

It was good to chat with you on the phone last month about the apparent plagiarism by former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair of a Wall Street Journal AIDS article from 1996.

I’m writing you today to follow up on my pitch to you about what I think is a crucial need for the Journal to publish a story about current HIV statistics in San Francisco.

First of all, the new monthly sexually transmitted disease report from the San Francisco Department of Public Health was released two weeks ago and it shows that for the month of April, out of 183 HIV antibody tests performed, not a single recent HIV infection was detected. [1]

As you may know, the DPH contends there are an estimated 1100 new HIV infections occurring annually in San Francisco, so it is reasonable to expect that there should be approximately 91 new recent HIV infections per month in the city.

However, in all of 2002 there were only 31 recent HIV infections recorded, a figure which hardly approaches the 1100 number projected by DPH. [2]

Three years after an HIV epidemiologist for the DPH told the San Francisco Chronicle that the city was experiencing sub-Saharan levels of new transmissions, generating voluminous news stories around the world over the alleged HIV infection rate here, data to back up such a claim is scarce. [3]

So where is America’s AIDS model city at in terms of new HIV infections and verifiable proof for the HIV rate? Is the rate going up, on a downward slope or remarkably stable?

How can San Francisco, which is supposedly in the throes of new HIV transmissions on a par with the African continent, have even one month in which no recent HIV infections are discovered?

The lack of a single recent HIV infection during April is the latest example, in my opinion, of how the city may not be experiencing either sub-Saharan levels of new infections or any where near the alleged 1100 annual new HIV transmissions. The 2002 year-end STD report for the city reveals that for the last two years, less than one hundred HIV antibody test results were positive. [4]

And, it is highly likely that a sizable number of those positive test results were among repeat testers, thereby driving down the annual figures for HIV positive test results.

If you examine the monthly STD reports during last year, you’ll find that during February, March and June of 2002, there were zero recent HIV infections recorded in those three months. [5, 6, 7]

Additionally, for every month last year when recent HIV infections were documented, the number of recent infections was in the low single-digits.

The following question must be asked: How can San Francisco health officials claim surging HIV rates, when the number of HIV positive test results for two years in a row is below 100 per year, and recent HIV infections documented on a monthly basis never climbs into the double-digits?

I ask this as questions have been in raised in my circle of friends about the alarm sounded by the DPH regarding a new strain of a drug resistant staph infection, and a June 5 story appeared in the Bay Area Reporter casting legitimate doubt on the claims and numbers of DPH authorities.

“Just how prevalent the staph infections have been is difficult to gauge. In January, one doctor said he suspected as many as 300 gay men in San Francisco had developed the troublesome staph. Health officials could not verify the number and have yet to produce any credible data on the actual number of cases,” the B.A.R. reported.

The head of DPH, Dr. Mitch Katz, told the B.A.R.: “I haven’t seen that data. Because most of these infections are not going to get reported, there will never be very good data on it.”

That comment, frankly, raises troubling concerns not just about how DPH determined there was an outbreak of epidemic proportions of the new staph infection besetting the gay male community, but it also calls into question the ability of DPH to prove its HIV rate, and that is it indeed exploding on a level akin to that seen in some African countries.

Of all the newspapers in the world devoted to accurately reporting and verifying numbers and statistics, the Journal stands alone.

Having said that, I hope you and the Journal investigate and report on the current status of HIV statistics for San Francisco.

Best,
Michael Petrelis
PH: 415-621-6267

Sources:
1. http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/Reports/STD/STDMONTH.pdf
2. http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/Reports/STD/STD0212.pdf
3. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/06/30/MN105153.DTL
4. http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/Reports/STD/STD0212.pdf
5. http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/Reports/STD/std0202.pdf
6. http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/Reports/STD/std0203.pdf
7. http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/Reports/STD/std0206.pdf