Due to an error, this video never got posted in the post it was supposed to be in. This is the documentary The Gift by Louise Hogarth. It received some pretty good press. The other video that accidentally got posted twice is called New Wave AIDS, a 1995 documentary by Journeyman Films. The film lasts an hour, but it is well worth it. A truly amazing subculture.
In the other post, I neglected to mention one other reason why men are bug chasing and barebacking, especially barebacking. There is an element of danger in barebacking at least and this is part of the attraction. I can certainly understand the attraction of danger as I have been susceptible to that myself in life, especially when I was younger. But I think even if I were gay, the risk of AIDS and near-certain death would be just a bit too scary for my tastes.
These guys think that with the new antivirals, AIDS is becoming a manageable disease like diabetes. First of all, you do not want to get diabetes. It’s one heck of a disease, and far from being manageable, it kills many people every year in the US. So it’s not as manageable as you think.
Second of all, if you are lucky, you might 10 healthy years. Around the 10-year mark, you are probably going to start to get sick, quite sick. This will only get worse until maybe in another ten years, 20 years after conversion, you die of AIDS or something related to it. Now that is if you are lucky. Some men convert, develop AIDS very rapidly, and are dead within a year or two. One of young men in the movie converted during the course of the movie and during the course of the filming, he had already become so sick that he could barely get out of bed. So you see, you might not get that lucky 10 years at all, or the next lucky 10 sick years. You might go out awfully fast.
Another problem is that drugs used to treat HIV. ART drugs in particular are cardiotoxic. They are harmful to the heart. But HIV itself damages your heart. So if the disease itself doesn’t kill you, the anti-HIV drugs that are being used to keep you alive just might! It seems like a no-win situation.
I feel like all of these ads showing healthy HIV infected people are giving out the wrong message. People think they can get HIV and be just as robustly healthy as the people in the ads. It’s just not true.
