Do SF People With AIDS Need NYC's ACRIA?

(ACRIA consultants Cesar Angel, left, and Hanna Tessema, held a forum in San Francisco on Nov. 14. Photo credit: Rick Gerharter.)

There are a few questions in need of answers regarding the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America, why they recently sent two consultants to San Francisco and how to locate their body of research and findings on the web. This note was sent to ACRIA folks today and when I hear back from them, I'll write a new post:

Hello Hanna and Cesar,

I was unable to make your visit forum at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, so I'm following up with written questions about it and ACRIA's purpose in coming here.

You should check out Matthew Bajko's article in the BAR, http://ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=70186 , because it's really all I know about your forum.

1. Why did ACRIA fly you and Cesar Angel to San Francisco to chat with longterm AIDS survivors? Maybe you were invited by leaders of the Let's Kiss ASS group, and if so, lemme know.

2. How much did ACRIA spend for travel, hotel, renting a room at the center, the catered lunch and all other expenses to have you two come here?

3. Who are ACRIA's primary funders, how much have you received in the past four years from Gilead and did any drug company pay for this trip in part or whole?

4. What exactly is involved with these trainings you're putting on around the country and how will they potentially benefit a longterm PWA such as myself?

5. Why do we supposedly need ACRIA coming from NYC to host such a forum and take an interest in alleged non-cooperation between AIDS and aging groups?

6. What agreement was made between ACRIA and Let's Kick ASS for forum, what other ways are they partnered with each other and how can I obtain the written MOU between the groups?

7. At the BAR site, this comment was made by Mike Wonders:

"We have a New York based group coming out here to tell help us figure out what to do. It's all about funding the professional AIDS machine. We have endless focus groups, surveys, research, meetings, consultants, seminars, paid travel to national conferences etc"

How do you respond to his thinking, which I've heard other SF PWAs express about both ACRIA and leaders of Let's Kick Ass.

8. Your page about aging PWAs and depression, http://www.acria.org/depression-research , contains no links to any of the research or findings, even though it all began in 2007. Can you provide me any links to the actual research or findings? The page also says you're in the process of publishing results. Please inform of which scientific journal will soon publish these results and when.

9. There are no links to any of the results of ACRIA drug research in the past year posted at this page: http://www.acria.org/research-results . Please provide me with links to all of the results and also consider linking to the results at that page.

10. Your only study on your site is the ROAH Report, https://www.dropbox.com/s/2mhuk7xcynqurhd/ROAH%20Report%20Final.pdf , and it's from 2006. Why is this old study the only one on ACRIA's site? Also, financial disclosure about any funding from drug companies or other outside sources that underwrote the study, along with disclosure on the part of the researchers were omitted. Why the omissions?

11. Finally, are you or Cesar either HIV poz or over 50 or both? It's important to ask these questions to give me a better and fuller understanding of your backgrounds.

Please give me your answers in the coming days. Thanks.

Reuters Sounds Latest CDC Gay Syphilis Alarm, Ignoring 23% Drop in SF Gays

For more years than I can count, whenever STD experts at the Centers for Disease Control wanted to sound alarms about syphilis in America, they would use data from San Francisco's public health department to bolster their scary messages. Well, that pattern may be coming to an end.

A story from the Reuters news service over the weekend about a new syphilis report from the CDC cites new data that is of concern to me, but interestingly, no stats or data are presented about gay men and syphilis in San Francisco.

From Reuters:

Syphilis has risen sharply among gay and bisexual men in the United States this decade, driving up the country's rate for the disease and placing these men at higher risk for AIDS, federal health officials say ...

Gay and bisexual men accounted for 7 percent of syphilis cases in 2000 but more than 60 percent in 2005, CDC experts estimated.

"The most devastating consequence of this increase in syphilis cases would be an increase in the rates of HIV infection," said Dr. Khalil Ghanem of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

"Syphilis and HIV have a close, deadly symbiotic relationship."

I guess this researcher is unaware of an important study from 2004 that found the following good results:

To date, we detected no marked increases in HIV incidence among MSM in 2 HIV-testing populations, concurrent with the syphilis outbreak in San Francisco.

Maybe the federal researchers missed that study, but did they also not see the SF Chronicle story about the findings?:

A steep rise in syphilis cases among gay men in San Francisco has not produced a related increase in HIV infections, researchers reported Tuesday, stirring hope that the city may avoid a new wave of AIDS cases abetted by other sexually transmitted diseases.

As I am well aware, when STD or HIV rates are rising in San Francisco, then CDC experts love to tout the surges, but if the numbers are declining, or in the case of syphilis diagnoses climbing in 2004, but no equal rise in HIV, the data is conveniently overlooked by federal researchers and mainstream reporters.

So what's the most current yearly data on gay syphilis in San Francisco showing?

Syphilis cases of less than one year's duration (including primary, secondary and early latent cases) decreased from 550 cases in 2004 to 426 in 2005, a decrease of 23 percent.

To drive home the point about the 23% drop, SF DPH not only reported it in the annual summary but also in the December 2005 monthly report.

While I believe we should all be concerned about every STD out there, I'm sick and tired of federal health officials using gullible reporters to constantly put out a fearful message about gays and syphilis, and willfully omitting any of the declines in San Francisco's very sexually active gay male community.