REFLECTIONS OF AIDS

REFLECTIONS: NYC AIDS campaign raises alarms
by Sean Strub
this is a respost from my dear freind SEAN STRUB.
the article faces the AIDS challenges of right now-

The New York City Department of Health's "It's Never Just HIV" advertising campaign ( www.youtube.com ) , targeted to encourage HIV negative gay and bisexual men to use condoms, has prompted a conversation that is profoundly important and speaks directly to the heart of the problems with HIV prevention.
The ad features doleful, frightened or ashamed young men who are so attractive they look like characters TV's Lost, set against a soundtrack appropriate for a horror film. The ad's message is that HIV doesn't exist in isolation; it also brings other serious health problems.

X-rays of badly broken bones, an MRI of an atrophied brain and, most shocking, a close-up photograph of a man's cancer-encrusted anus graphically make the point. The voiceover sounds like a poor man's Don Lafontaine ( he's the legendary "voice of God" who often starts movie trailers with "In a world ..." ) , evoking an apocalyptic end-of-the-world feeling.

GMHC ( formerly known as the Gay Men's Health Crisis ) and GLAAD ( the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation ) share the concern of many people with HIV, prevention experts and activists and rightly issued a press release calling for the ad to be pulled, asserting it is sensationalistic and stigmatizing.

UK-based journalist Gus Cairns, who has HIV, commented on Michael Petrelis' blog, "I hate this ad because it's sadistic and bullying. ... It's horrified by gay men and gay sex in general, using images of bodily corruption and disease to ram home things that—despite 50 years of gay lib—we still feel about ourselves: look at the suicide, depression and drug use statistics. The message it gives—not factually, but with all the visceral power of that five-frame shot of a ruined ass—is that if you're out on the scene, death and decay are stalking you and serves you right if they get you."

Others have questioned its presentation of facts. The horrible conditions noted are typically found only in some older people with HIV, or those who are not diagnosed until later stages of the disease; anal cancer is caused by an entirely different virus, osteoporosis is likely as much a function of anti-retroviral treatment as it is HIV itself, etc.
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