US Federal health officials are reporting a sharp increase in unprotected sex among gay American men over the last decade, a development that makes it harder to fight the AIDS epidemic. The same trend has recently been documented among gay men in Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, France and Australia, heightening concerns among public health officials worldwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of men who told federal health investigators that they had had unprotected anal sex in the last year rose nearly 20% from 2005 to 2011. In the 2011 survey, unprotected sex was more than twice as common among men who said they did not know whether they were infected with H.I.V. Excerpt from the report:
Unprotected anal sex at least once in the past 12 months increased from 48% in 2005 to 57% in 2011. The percentage engaging in unprotected discordant anal sex was 13% in 2008 and 2011. In 2011, 33% of HIV-positive but unaware MSM reported unprotected discordant anal sex. Among MSM with negative or unknown HIV status, 67% had an HIV test in the past 12 months. Among those tested recently, the percentage HIV-positive but unaware of their infection was 4%, 5%, and 7% among those tested in the past 3, 4–6, and 7–12 months, respectively.
May take on all this? In my book, I wrote about why gay men do what they do ad nauseum; therefore, I will not rehash all of those arguments here. But, I will offer this bit of anecdotal evidence: back in the early 1990s, I personally witnessed a rather aggressive and somewhat organized attempt within the gay community to renounce many of the safe-sex mantras that some felt were forcibly imposed upon homosexuals after the mid-80s AIDS crisis. I heard a few of my friends derisively refer to those who touted a clinical approach to gay sex as “condom-queens.” By the late-90s, this phenomenon was in full swing with the massively popular reintroduction of gay bareback porn films and the once again flourishing business of sex-shops, glory-holes, and bathhouses around San Francisco. Now, we are seeing a similar anti-movement: this time, against the gay elite lobby push for the new homosexual image as monogamous, middle-class, and married. As my companions said in the early-90s, they wanted to return gay life to its fundamentals and original basic principles: anonymous, dangerous, and sweaty sex.
From Europe:
Some 131,000 people were newly infected with HIV in Europe and nearby countries in 2012, an 8% rise from a year earlier and a worrying reversal of a recent downward trend in AIDS cases in the West. A report published by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) European office and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) showed a steady increase in new HIV cases over the last year, but by far the majority of cases were in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.Some 76,000 new HIV infections were reported in Russia alone, accounting for more than half the region's cases.
Link to CDC report: