It's been a while since I've blogged (okay, it's been a really long while...) but the POZ team has been busy with a host of things, including developing a cool new stigma-busting online game with mtvU and the Kaiser Family Foundation. The game launched yesterday and it's already creating quite a stir! It's called "Pos or Not" and it's aimed at getting people to see that you can't tell who has HIV and who does not by looking at them. Our hope is that by daylighting all these amazing young people living with the virus and putting them into the mix with people who are HIV negative, people will finally realize that there's nothing "other" or "extraordinary" (in a bad way) about people living with HIV. Hopefully, this will help people understand that there is no reason to discriminate against or stigmatize those of us living with HIV.
Stigma is a barrier to so many things: getting tested, disclosing your status, accessing care, getting funding to support education, prevention, research and treatment, even getting the presidential candidates to discuss the topic of HIV/AIDS. Especially before I disclosed my status publicly, and to a degree, even afterwards, stigma has played a huge role in the decisions I've made about living with HIV. It made me run out of the hospital waiting room where I was getting labwork done when I saw people I knew. It made me leave the drugstore without getting my meds because I knew people standing in line at the pharmacy. And it made me live a life of shame, isolation and fear for nearly a decade.
What has helped me escape stigma is releasing myself from it. I have realized that I made a choice many others do every day: I had sex without a condom. The only difference is that when I made that choice, HIV was present. When others made (or make) the same choice, HIV wasn't (or isn't) there. But the fact that HIV was present when I made the same choice as almost all others on the planet doesn't make me a "bad" person. It just makes me an HIV-positive one. There is no shame in living with the disease and while I understand all too well how fear of being stigmatized makes those of us living with the virus want to sometimes hide our status, the time has certainly come for the world to have a different attitude towards people who merely harbour a retrovirus.
When people living with HIV come forward unapologetically, without shame, and speak about having HIV, it allows them to get rid of the mantle of shame some people want to place on them. Disclosing your HIV status isn't for everyone, and you have to do it when and if it's right for you. But the more of us who come forward and matter-of-factly discuss our serostatus, the more the rest of the world will be likely to understand that those living with HIV are only "extraordinary" in a good way!
I've thought a lot about how we can fight stigma...and I'm still working on developing tactics that might change the way people see those of us living with HIV/AIDS for the better. This summer, at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, POZ will gather some of the world's top thinkers to strategize ways we can diminish the stigma around HIV/AIDS.
In the meantime, I've come to the conclusion that one of the most impactful ways to change people's perceptions of HIV/AIDS is to introduce the wide world face-to-face to the HIV community. I think it's easier to fear, dismiss and discriminate against something, or someone, you don't know. So, in the spirit of introductions, I invite you to meet some truly extraordinary young people living with HIV and other who are not who joined this game to support those of us living with, and affected by, HIV/AIDS.
Okay, some of you have already seen that I’m in Kenneth Cole’s new Spring 2008 fashion campaign. For those who haven’t, I wanted to tell you about it. Not to self-promote, but because it is a great campaign with other people who, according to the folks at Kenneth Cole, “replace stereotypical models with bold, unexpected people of substance.” (Marketing people make everything sound great.) The campaign uses the new media cleverly to get across the point that, as the tagline says, “We all walk in different shoes.” It’s based on the notion of 25 years of non-uniform thinking, alluding to Kenneth Cole’s untraditional approach of using his multimillion dollar ad campaigns to not only sell shoes, handbags and clothes, but to sensitize people’s minds, making them aware of critical social issues and maybe even encouraging them to change their behavior for the better.
In this era when we discuss things like whether too much U.S. money is being spent on AIDS overseas (it is not, we just simultaneously need additional funding allocated to prevent AIDS in America and to help Americans living with AIDS) or whether spending millions to raise millions to fight AIDS is a viable equation (it is, if it raises money that would never have been raised otherwise), I think it’s interesting that money can be doubly-purposed—in this case, to sell fashion and to open minds.
Everyone in the campaign has an amazing story to tell of overcoming a different challenge. What was interesting was that my challenge—HIV—was hard to show. One woman, Aimee Mullins, is an incredible athlete with artificial legs. A young man, Sonny Caberwal, dresses in the traditional clothing of a practicing Sikh while speaking out against racial profiling. People can see the obstacles they had to overcome. But HIV? How to best show that?
We decided on a faux-tattoo on my arm because I once was going to brand myself, visibly, with “HIV+.” In the early days of living with HIV, I knew the importance of telling people that I was positive, but it was so hard. I was so afraid of rejection. I thought if my body said it, then my lips might not have to. But, I also thought there may come a day when they’d cure HIV and then I really wouldn’t want the tattoo. I decided that I would just summon the courage to speak up.
I didn’t always, at first. So I left a lot of people confused about why I would suddenly just vanish from their lives. It was just that when I met someone new, I wasn’t sure how they’d react and if I got the sense that they would reject me, I’d just skip disclosure all together. But, of course, when it came to potential sexual partners, this wasn’t an option (I didn’t want to expose anyone to the virus with or without their knowing, even if everything was protected) so, I walked away from a bunch of people never really knowing what they’d say if I told them.
Now in my 11th year of living with HIV, it’s gotten easier to disclose. The funny thing is, I still have to do it all the time. I thought after spending the last two years taking openly in public about HIV, I’d get to the point where I wouldn’t have to disclose. But there are lots of people who don’t read POZ, don’t watch Oprah and still haven’t seen the Kenneth Cole campaign. So, when I say I work for “POZ” they hear “PAWS” and think I write about cats and dogs.
It’s been an incredibly liberating journey for me. A little over two years ago, I was in shock waiting for the April 2006 POZ cover to hit the streets and waiting for a story about my appointment at POZ to break in the New York Times newspaper. Then, I was scared out of my mind about what would happen. A little over two weeks ago, the day that the Kenneth Cole campaign came out in the New York Times newspaper, I was surprisingly calm. I realized I’ve become so matter-of-fact about disclosing my HIV status that I have to remind myself that it is still shocking to people.
I guess the point is that even the most shocking news becomes banal when told over and over. And, as someone once said to me in my early days at POZ, “Don’t worry, you’ll be yesterday’s news soon enough.” That was a relief, then. Now, I hope lots of people see this campaign and I hope it shocks them into the reality that while people discriminate against other people for all sorts of things, AIDS is the ultimate equal opportunity offender and it can, and does, happen to every sort of person in the world.
Oh yeah, and I’m rethinking that tattoo. The creative director, who calls the people in the campaign “non-uniform thinkers,” said I was a “non-uniform inker.” I like the ring of that. I think it might me time for my body to make a statement that my lips are all too familiar uttering.
Let me know what you think of the campaign…and the ink!
So I'm sitting at the vet's office, in rural New Jersey, with my large Siamese cat on my lap. He's got a fever--and a huge lump under his chin. It's clearly an infection, and as the two of us curl up in the waiting room corner, trying to keep a low profile as all the dogs in the room have their eyes fixed on us, I find myself wondering whether cats get the drug-resistant strain of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA)--the much hyped infection that seems to have spread like MRSA itself through the international press. The press coverage on MRSA of late is so hysterical I'm not sure which to fear more--drug-resistant MRSA or the potential nuclear threat posed by Iran.
We have done our best to debunk the hysteria around MRSA (stay tuned for the next issue of POZ!), and I am well aware that it can be treated (though it is virulent, quick-spreading and potentially deadly if untreated). BUT I still found myself wondering whether my cat was a carrier of MRSA, and if so, whether I'd be its next victim.
The vet treated my cat (he had a bite wound that did have a bacterial, but not MRSA, infection) and assured me that the biggest danger I faced from my cat was his teeth, which he would surely brandish when I tried to shoot the liquid antibiotic into his mouth with the tiny syringe she gave me.
The fact that my irrational fears overcame what I knew to be the medical facts around MRSA made me feel guilty. Was I no different from the international journalists who fell prey to MRSA's hypnotic power to invoke terror? The difference, I consoled myself, is that I kept my irrational fears to myself (and my vet), while other journalists riffed off MRSA's fear factor to sell newspapers and magazines and to keep eyeballs glued to the TV set.
The latest drama on the MRSA front is a press release issued recently by researchers from the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) about a study conducted in Boston and San Francisco that found that "men who have sex with men in San Francisco are 13 times more likely than other city residents to get drug-resistant staph." The study, reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine and its accompanying press statement, invoked a level of fear that caused one British tabloid to ask whether MRSA could be "the next AIDS."
A hubbub ensued as gay rights advocates responded to UCSF's press release and as the press coverage it created. Click here for a link to AIDS activist Michael Petrelis' blog entry about three editors of gay publications questioning the way the UCSF study was covered in the mainstream media. As a result, the parties responsible for issuing the release offered a formal apology. Click here to see coverage of UCSF's press release and apologies in the New York Times on 1/20.
What amazes me about the situation is how quickly the press, jumped on a story about gay men being dangerous carriers of yet another serious transmissible disease. It might be a story if gay men were the only one who could contract and/or spread drug-resistant staph. But, as is true with HIV, anyone can and will get diseases if they are exposed to them in a way that allows a disease to enter their body. Just as HIV has no idea whether the body into which it enters is gay or straight, MRSA has no idea about the sexual orientation of the skin it contacts and infects.
The fact is - and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) agrees - that MRSA is not a bona fide sexually transmitted infection limited to a certain population. It passes from one person to another via skin-to-skin contact or when a person touches a contaminated surface. It is widespread in hospitals and among hospital workers. Anyone who comes in contact with it can get it. And, there is nothing about gay men that makes them more, or less, prone to skin-to-skin contact.
The danger of linking certain biological agents in certain ways to certain subsets of the populace (like men who have sex with men) is that it gives too many people who are actually at risk for being exposed to a given biological agent an excuse to think that they need not worry about coming in contact with it. Imagine if, from the beginning, the international press had properly positioned HIV as a virus that anyone, in any circumstance, of any age, race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or religion could contract through even a single act of unprotected sex or the sharing of a needle? How differently would the world have responded to HIV if it had not tried to portray as one affecting only the gay community? How many lives - gay and straight - would have been saved? How many infections could have been prevented if all people understood the truth - that everyone is at risk for contracting HIV if they have unprotected sex or share needles?
If we want to arbitrarily "assign" drug-resistant MRSA to groups of people that are believed to have more skin-to-skin contact than other groups, why don't we consider communities beyond the gay community? What about college kids at fraternity parties? What about high school kids across the nation on prom night? Married and monogomous couples on Valentine's Day and their anniversaries? (Or any other especially amorous night?) Couples on their honeymoon? I bet these folks all have lots of skin-to-skin contact. My point is that I am tired of the media, and the larger public, acting like gay men are the only ones who get naked and touch each other and that they are therefore at greater risk than other people for having bacteria and viruses spreading among them.
Instead of demonizing any part of society by connecting them to unsavory notions like infectious, drug-resistant bacteria or deadly viruses, let's broadcast the truth: that a teenage football player in the American heartland who shares towels or walks barefoot on wet tiles or touches countertops in the gym locker room is as likely a candidate for contracting drug-resistant MRSA (if it is present) as is a gay man in Boston. And if that same teenage football player has unprotected heterosexual sex, he is also at risk for contracting HIV (and numerous other STDs). Yes, the frequency of sex ups the risk for any given person getting an STD, as do the number of partners, the type of sex and whether or not there is excessive friction that could cause condom breakage or tears in the skin that could make it easier for biological agents to pass from one person to another. BUT consider this: who's to say that they can accurately generalize a whole segment of the populace's sexual behavior? I know gay men who have had one partner for years and straight guys who can't count the number of women they've slept with in the last 12 months. Sexual orientation is not necessarily a fair indicator of sexual habits and therefore relative risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases or diseases that pass from one person to another via bare skin.
So, please, let us stop trying to force a connection between any given group of people and any given disease (where one does not exist). It is arrogant of us to think that simply by labeling a disease as the sole or primary property of any given group that we can keep it from affecting us, too. Nature knows no bounds. If we want to fear something real, we should fear the dangers of mistakenly thinking that we are immune to certain diseases because of our gender, color, religion, political beliefs or our sexual orientation. AIDS, and drug-resistant MRSA, are equal opportunity offenders and they will continue to find all potential hosts, with complete disdain for artificial rubrics assigned to them by society.
I am afraid to count the number of days since I last blogged. I know I was in Australia and that was some time in August. It wouldn't be one of my blogs unless I started with a mea culpa for my absence. What can I say? The time flies and there is so much to do and so little of the flying time in which to do it. Anyway, I'm back.
So I got up this morning and as I carved out a sizeable wedge of my Entenmann's raspberry twist danish, I realized that the box was covered with pink ribbons and messages about breast cancer awareness. And thinking back to my last visit to Shoprite, as I piled my food onto the beltway to check out, I noticed that the coffee cake was not the only edible vehicle of breast cancer awareness. My bread and my M&Ms were also emblazoned with pink-lettered messenging. Heck, the M&Ms themselves were pink and white. So were the Tic Tacs. I have to give it to the girls behind breast cancer--the Susan G. Komen Foundation has really gone beyond the pale to ensure that everyone - EVERYONE - knows that October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. All over America I'm sure women are plowing through their pink chocolate covered candies while waiting to be screened for cancer.
As I ate my cake, I had to wonder, why is there no National AIDS Awareness Month? I know we have World AIDS Day, coming up on December 1st. And there's National HIV Testing Day each year in June, but why does AIDS get only two days and breast cancer gets 31? The answer is that there's no organization in the AIDS community pushing for public, month-long awareness the way Komen does. And it's a shame. Because the stats for women (people!) contracting HIV are certainly dire enough to warrant such a month of focus.
At my previous magazine, I wrote our annual feature story about breast cancer for three years. The final year I wrote about it, I was invited to a "Survivors Ball" held at a swanky hotel in northern NJ. I remember that a wealthy, and anonymous, patron had donated hundreds of the most beautiful pink peonies I have ever seen. The whole ballroom was awash in fuschia and 800 women came together that night to celebrate their survival - and remember the ones who had been lost to the disease.
At one point, a Latina woman who knew I was writing the story approached me and said she wanted to show me something. She led me to the ladies room, lifted her blouse, opened her stuffed brassiere and showed me two horrific circular scars where her breasts had once been. She'd had a double masectomy in the 1960s and had not been given the option to reconstruct her breasts. It looked like they'd been removed with a chainsaw. I steadied mysef and after redressing she said, "Only you and my husband have seen what they did to me. I have been ashamed of myself for 45 years. But tonight, I am no longer ashamed. I am proud I have lived and I now know that I am still a complete woman even without my breasts. I just wanted you to know that."
I think I staggered out of that bathroom. 45 years of shame. I'd had 10 with my HIV. I knew was she had felt, but I wasn't about to let my HIV cat out of the bag, not that night, not in that setting. I wasn't ready then.
I thanked her for sharing her story with me and returned to my table. The evening was coming to a crescendo - the band fired up Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and 800 women danced and sang out at the top of their lungs and cried and waved handfuls of peonies about. I was so grateful that so many people were crying because it seemed perfectly normal that water would be running down my face - I was the compassionate journalist, right? Caught up in the moment, totally empathisizing with a throng of incredible women who cheered for their tenacity and cried for the inevitable casualties of a deadly disease.
I cried for all that, but I also cried for all those living with HIV/AIDS and all those who'd died from it. And I cried because it seemed so incredibly wrong that a group of AIDS survivors couldn't have a similar ball, in a fancy ballroom, with big red flowers on the table. Since that night, I have hoped that someday those of us living with HIV will be able to celebrate as openly as those women who had beaten breast cancer.
I think it's reasonable to expect that if people can be sitting down to breakfast, slicing up sweet, sticky pieces of coffee cake that remind them to get tested (early! early detection equals survival!) for breast cancer, that we can do the same thing for AIDS. Personally, I think AIDS can become as socially acceptable a disease as breast cancer. And I think the messaging should be similar: take control of your life - know your status.
I look forward to the day when I'll be eating my Entenmann's AIDS coffee cake, grateful for the survival of many, paying tribute to those who have passed, and feeling calmer knowing that people all across America are thinking matter of factly about the need to get tested for HIV.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think that if the companies who support breast cancer would do the same thing for AIDS, it would help to normalize the disease. Putting AIDS out into the open, and onto, say, a bag of bite-sized Snickers bars, might go a long way towards helping people understand that this is just another disease that can affect everyone - a disease that is best fought if addressed as early as possible.
I think I'm gonna call a few of those companies and see what they'd say...
We left Australia Sunday morning (Aussie time) and flew through two sunrises, one sunset, across the international dateline from today into yesterday and from the southern to the northern hemisphere to arrive in Los Angeles four hours before we left Sydney. We then sat trapped on the departure side of security at LAX (LA’s international airport) for 16 hours while two planes we were supposed to ride home were deemed unsafe to fly. I don’t know what’s worse: the surreal jet lag (amplified by massive fatigue and a slight hangover…because after thirty hours of travel, you have to have a glass of wine…) or the culture shock of re-entry to the U.S.
Don’t get me wrong. I love America. I practically kissed the ground at JFK when we finally touched down in New York. But it is amazing how loud and disheveled we can seem compared to people in cultures overseas. Also, we are so out for ourselves. Sean and I were not seated together on the last leg of the trip, so we asked if people minded reshuffling. One old man wagged his finger disapprovingly and said no way was he giving up his window seat. Another just ignored us completely. Finally, a young Asian woman offered her seat…
When our second plane was canceled, and it was announced that we had to go to customer service to try to secure the next ride home, people stampeded past one another. One guy was screaming into two cell phones at once while he elbowed past a young mother trying frantically to steer a baby carriage laden with siblings while she sprinted through the airport. I wanted to help her out—but I also didn’t want to spend another 16 hours at LAX. The phrase “kill or be killed” kept flowing through my mind. In the end, for all the high-speed dialing and rude maneuvering, the guy with the tandem phones took the same plane—hours later—that we were on. As he walked down the aisle past us, I secretly hoped that they’d sat him next to the two little kids who, like the rest of us, were completely at the end of their ropes. I have to admit, I missed the Zen-like flow of the crowds on scooters, motorcycles and bikes in Viet Nam who deferentially swerve around you as long as you don’t stop suddenly, or accelerate wildly. If I learned anything on this trip it’s the importance of patience and the power of forging ahead smoothly through life without trying to stand your ground, or run anyone over in the process of trying to get where you are going.
We saw our third sun-up sans sleep (because the red-eye from LA actually took off a.m. time in Australia) while on the final plane. Watching the edge of space turn crimson from 36,000 feet is a life-affirming sight. The glow of first light above the clouds is so different from the one we see from earth. It seemed fitting to close out the life-changing 22-day trip watching a new day break over the bow of the planet. It reminded me of a blast of morning light I saw several years ago. I was traveling to see my family and had survived a particularly nasty take-off in stormy skies around Houston. As the plane pitched and bucked, I remember feeling that I’d be so disappointed in myself if I died before fulfilling my promise to myself that some day I’d do something about AIDS. When the plane pierced the bright sunny sky that always sits above the darkest rain clouds, I told myself that as soon as I could, I’d get on the activist wagon. It took a little while, but I did it. And the peaceful pink dawn we saw days ago seemed a sign from nature that I was on the right path.
Okay, enough Hallmark.
Let’s talk witches and virgins.
Two reasons I am glad (and proud) to be an American: 1) we do not call people living with HIV witches, and hunt them down and kill them and 2) we do not believe that sleeping with a virgin will protect you from HIV.
Just before leaving Australia, I read the report that more than 500 HIV-positive women have been beaten or killed by mobs of people in Papua New Guinea (PNG) who claim the women are witches who have “cursed the Pacific island nation’s younger generation with AIDS.” The main evidence, according to one report, is that the HIV-positive women “walk differently from others.” After having spent several days listening to local authorities in Australia brag about how they have minimized the rate of HIV infection in Australia and how they intend to play a pivotal role in supporting Southeast Asia keep their AIDS epidemics under control AND having talked personally with Maura Elaripe Mea an HIV-positive woman from PNG (see the interview on the IAS conference coverage page), I was flabbergasted to hear that HIV-positive women are being murdered on an island so close to Australia.
Last Thursday night, I was a guest on ABC Radio National’s “Australia Talks,” a national radio show, along with Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer (who recently upped Australia’s AIDS funding from $400 million to $1 billion), Bill Bowtell, director of the HIV/AIDS Project at the Lowy Institute for International Policy and Dr. Patricia Fagan. Dr. Fagan commented that there have been no reported cases of HIV in the Torres Straits—the body of water filled with tiny islands that sits between Australia and PNG. It seemed from her report that the HIV infections on PNG were going to stay contained there. There was no mention of the witch-hunts nor reference to the supposed threat of micro-chipping that HIV-positive Papua New Guineans currently face (Is this insane? Human Rights Watch we need you!). During the show, two of the live callers furthered my fear that what the top brass was saying about HIV prevention in Australia (and the surrounding region) might not dovetail with the realities there. One caller suggested government prevention campaigns should not be focusing on messaging about condoms but rather, focusing on how to teach and help people be monogamous. Another caller reminded the live listening audience that there are many in Southeast Asia who believe that HIV can be prevented if you sleep with a virgin. When I hear comments like these, I know we have a lot of work to do, even in parts of the world where the HIV infection rate seems, for the moment, to be contained. While Australia has unquestionably done a great job on the prevention front, I wonder whether what has worked on that continent will translate to cultures near in geography but far away in terms of cultural similarity. It also struck me that no matter where you are in the world the same issues continue to rear their heads as impediments to good AIDS prevention. There are the religiously conservative who thwart condom distribution and education about real-world safe sex, there are massive power imbalances that make it difficult for women (both with and without HIV) to protect themselves, and there are superstitions and deep-seated cultural beliefs that fly in the face of science-based evidence.
We need a team of cultural specialists who can find the root source of these grossly incorrect notions (AIDS witches and anti-AIDS virgins) and get on an informational and diplomatic cultural mission to clear up these heinous misperceptions and thus protect women-who-would-otherwise-be-seen-as-witches and people-who-would-like-to-remain-virgins.
While I am duly impressed by Australia’s track record so far with controlling AIDS, I fear that they are in an era of AIDS complacency that could lead to a surge in new infections (particularly in groups who don’t think they’re at risk). Ask an Australian on the street whether he or she thinks they’re at risk for HIV. They’ll likely tell you it’s a disease that only gay men and IDUs get. This amazes me. I am morbidly fascinated that people think whole segments of the populace live in bubbles. As if gay men and IDUs never came into contact with people outside their social/sexual arenas. This naïve thinking is the very reason that AIDS has spread into every element of western society. It’s all too convenient to say “I’m not gay and I’m not an IDU so therefore I don’t have to worry about AIDS.” Even with vigilant and widespread testing it can take time for the reality of who is infected to synch up with the stats about who has HIV. I’m not entirely convinced that any nation knows the extent of its real AIDS caseload. Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard has plans to keep HIV out of Australia by keeping HIV-positive people from coming into the country. While this is one way to try to minimize the load of HIV-positive people on Australia’s national healthcare system, it doesn’t account for those who are positive and don’t yet know it in Australia, nor Australian citizens who travel to Southeast Asia and may bring HIV back with them. I think this is part of the reason why Australia is committed to fighting HIV in the region—and that’s great. But before they start micro-chipping HIV-positive people in Papua New Guinea, perhaps they should consider setting up some consequences for those who hunt witches and pay top dollar to sleep with children forced into the sex trade by the demand for their virgin bodies as protection against AIDS. Or at least launch an educational campaign directed at busting those myths.
I was also on two other radio shows while in Australia, and while I was glad for the airtime and the opportunity to spread the word that HIV can happen to anyone, I was a little disappointed that the questions were so focused on the personal, prurient details of how I contracted HIV and my diagnosis. I wonder why people need to ask, “How did you FEEL when you found out you had HIV?” “Were you afraid you would die?” (Answers: Terrified, of course. Yes, of course.) It was all so very 1982. I know that many mainstream media people aren’t that up on AIDS 2007, but come on now—can’t we stay in the present and not always go back and harp on two days in a lifetime of HIV? (Namely, the day I got HIV and the day I found out I had it.) It peeves me a little that media constantly wants to focus on the dark side of HIV. I get that there aren’t that many people out there speaking so publicly about having HIV—but I wish we didn’t have to talk about the details of my life as opposed to what POZ is doing to combat AIDS. Let’s talk a little less about how people got HIV (unless we’re talking prevention) and more about how they can survive it and thrive in spite of it. So much of the media coverage perpetuates the stigma. By remaining ensconced in stereotypical images of HIV, we fail to paint a more up-to-date picture. There is drama throughout a positive person's life--and there is much more to my life than HIV.
The final day in Australia I met with an incredible group of men who represented the Who’s Who of AIDS in Australia, from Rob Lake, who is the CEO of People Living with HIV/AIDS (New South Wales) to Michael Badorrek, the media and communications manager from the AIDS Council of New South Wales (ACON) to Glenn Flanagan the editor of Talkabout--POZ's Aussie equivalent, among others. We were also joined by Craig McClure who is the executive director of the International AIDS Society (they put on the international AIDS conferences).We chatted about how to better link people living with HIV, both in Australia and around the world, and I shared what POZ has been doing. We commiserated about the challenges of finding funding to get our information out to as many people as possible and they asked a lot of questions about how we manage our relationships with pharma advertisers. (Did you know that the pharmaceutical companies can’t advertise directly to Australian consumers?) It was so great to know that we can support each other—and our readers—by linking everyone via the web. Stay tuned for some links to Australia…
Finally, it was time for one more walkabout before leaving gorgeous Australia. Sean and I headed to Watson’s Bay by jet cat (a high-speed ferry) and walked along, and beneath, the massive cliffs that flank the main entrance to Sydney Harbor. We saw rainbow colored lorikeets (bright, wild parrots) drinking the nectar of flowering trees, pretty tide pools with sea urchins, fish that glinted like tiny shards of silver in the shallow pools, and weird starfish and snails that wait patiently for the tides to return. I found the remains of a long-nosed bandicoot (a creature that looks like a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel and that is, technically, a marsupial about the size of a cat) and resisted my urge to add its skeleton to my collection. Not only would I have been stopped at customs; I was worried they might think I was a witch.
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