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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

Ah very good then. Well since the CDC now says that blacks and women are the most at-risk for HIV, we should probably change the rules with the times then, right?

What's that? It now sound horribly offensive, erroneous, and bad policy? Well sorry about that! Gotta be consistent you know.

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You're wrong on the facts part, as of this month the CDC still states "men who have sex with men (MSM) of all races and ethnicities remain the population most severely affected by HIV", with their estimated stats being that 2% of the US population are MSM, and they accounted for 61% of new HIV infections in 2009. MSM accounted for 49% of HIV infections in 2008. (Those years are most recent available data.) For more details check out their PDF at http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/PDF/us.pdf

(I'm not black or a woman, but am gay - for my own selfish sake I'd love what you said to be true.)

Good point. Very few people seem to be aware of the actual statistics on this subject, and not terribly interested in debating it further once once someone links to actual data which is quite frankly unequivocal. A bit ironic considering how self proclaimed enlightened people tend to look down their nose at the "uninformed" masses who think HIV is a "gay disease".

I have no issue with gay people at all, and on an absolute numbers basis, infection rates are not terribly high within that overall community. I just find it immensely interesting how people's normal thought processes (even those who are normally extremely logical and data oriented) are fundamentally altered when the subject of discussion is race, gender, sexuality, or culture.

Thanks for pointing it out.

I'm also aware of the statistics - roughly split between gays and heterosexuals. I think the problem lies more with the epistemological side of things. As the marrow registry, how do you know whether or not someone is gay? How do you know whether someone is HIV positive? Only one of these questions actually matters for donors, and only one of them is scientifically testable.

I'd agree with people who are okay with profiling if there wasn't a reliable test for HIV, or if there weren't enough resources to test for it, but I haven't found any evidence for either of those potential claims.

To hell with screening, if I was on death's door courtesy of leukemia I'd rather accept a transplant from someone I know is HIV positive. My logic: given the state of anti-retrovirals, being HIV positive sounds downright cushy compared to dying of leukemia.

I'm pretty sure you could get that operation, but not on health insurance of any kind.

yes, that's the report that went out yesterday. The context of the discussion was "at-risk" in the spirit of "have it but don't know it" or "don't know what to do about it"; not in the spirit of "have it". You can go over to the early release of the data here: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm60e1129a1.htm?s_c... ... the people that get the least counseling, don't think they are at risk, etc, are those two groups.

They are the ones that are most likely to have it and not know it or treat it and are also the ones to face the largest stigma in dealing with the issue.

That's the context; it was the time window after infection but before high confidence of the results in the mouth swab test, which is the standard method used in such circumstances (and also the cheapest).

Anyway, that is what I meant by it, and that's the report I was referring to when I said CDC. I didn't mean to say that gay people don't get it.

The prevalence rate for MSM (about 20,000 / 100,000)[1] is much higher than for black women (1,122 per 100,000)[2] or black men (2,388 per 100,000), though you are correct that all three groups have very high concentrations of HIV positive persons.

[1]http://healthland.time.com/2010/09/26/study-20-of-homosexual... [2]http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/factshe...

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