“I was sleeping around with people to fit in. To build up my self-esteem. I knew what I was doing, but I wasn’t taking ownership of it,” says Nathaniel Marshall matter-of-factly. “To fit in is every young person’s dream, but it’s another thing when you compromise your integrity.” With an ease gained from telling his story for a living, Marshall describes… return to article
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Reader Comments (14)Page 1 of 1 pagesThere are two issues with black men and AIDS. 1) The powers that be don’t care who dies of AIDS because the people who are most effected aren’t their constituents. 2) Black men need to be honest about their sexuality. I know too many men who “jump” back and forth between women and men, while not bothering to let anyone about their orientations.
History has told us that in order of national importance, women and minorities come last. Being black and female means that we are at the bottom of the food chain. Where does that leave us when it comes to AIDS and HIV prevention and treatment?
Posted by FeLicia Elam on Jul 14, 2003 at 8:41 PM The Center for Disease Control says, and now In These Times repeats “that as many as 30 percent of young, urban, African-American men WHO have sex with men were HIV-positive.” Well tell us, how many young, urban African-American men have sex with men? Without that figure, the CDC report amount to nothing less than psychological warfare against the African-American community. Are we to be alarmed at 30% of an unknown figure? This amounts to yelling “fire” in a movie theater, without proving there is a fire. I guess someone could legitimately yell “fire” if another person used a cigarette lighter to find something they dropped. What is the point of this article?
Posted by Mamadou Chinyelu on Jul 14, 2003 at 11:01 PM The author responds:
You’re absolutely right: Without any solid figures, the CDC report does come across as a bit hysterical. There wasn’t just one point to the piece; I had hoped to have many. Here are a couple:
Point one: African-Americans need to begin taking HIV/AIDS more seriously. Yes, we are to be alarmed: In 2001, African Americans—who make up just 12%-13% of the country’s population—accounted for 50% of the more than 41,000 new AIDS cases diagnosed among adults. That’s according to the CDC. African-American men accounted for 43% of HIV cases reported among men in 2001, with male-to-male sexual contact as the leading mode of transmission. African-American women accounted for nearly 64% of HIV cases reported among women in 2001, and their leading mode of transmission was sex with men. How many of those women were infected by MSM? We’ll probably never know. But while we’re trying to figure out whether that figure is important, 21,000 new folks—many of them young—are becoming infected each year.
Point two: One of the most effective ways that the black community can beat HIV/AIDS is to deal with male homosexuality in a way that protects women without demonizing men. That’s not just me talking; the AIDS service providers I interviewed agreed.
Point three: African-American MSMs have been overlooked and underserved for too long. How many of them are there? I can’t answer that, and neither can the CDC. The oft-quoted 30% breaks down like this: 2,942 young men who reported having sex with men signed up for the CDC study in six cities and agreed to be tested for HIV. 492 of them (or 17%) were black. Thirteen percent of the total (or 373 men) turned out to be HIV positive. Black men had the highest prevalence of HIV, as 32% of the 492 men were positive.
I hope that sheds some light on my thinking about the piece.
Thanks for entering the dialogue,
Karen Hawkins
Posted by Karen Hawkins on Jul 16, 2003 at 10:57 PM There is not one single document illustrating the DOGMA that the retrovirus HIV causes AIDS. Kary Mullis, the 1993 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry, and the inventor of the PCR machine which detects HIV, has risked his career pointing this out. Nor is AIDS ONE thing. It is a factititous collection of old diseases given a new name. African AIDS has nothing in common with North American/European AIDS.
All known viral and microbial epidemics rise exponentially then decline rapidly; spread randomly; cause highly specific diseases. (e.g. influenza only causes the flu, not cancer)
By contrast, North American/European AIDS exhibits all of the symptoms of diseases caused by non-contangious, factors: rises steadily, not exponentially; is non-random: 85% male; does NOT spread to the general public; does NOT manifest in one epidemic, but instead consist of over 30 diseases*
So if AIDS isn’t a viral epidemic, what is it? Prof. Duesberg suggests that the only new health risk factor to emerge in the past half century in America has been the explosive rise in drug consumption since the 1970’s. Ten years of excessive use of some drugs is sufficient to cause irreversible immune damage. This hypothesis explains both the time when the AIDS epidemic appeared and why it initially appeared in specific gay communities who were heavy poly-drug users. EG ìPoppersî, nitrate inhalants, directly destroy white blood cells, and were widely used among the first AIDS victims to induce anal sex.
AZT also causes AIDS. AZT, a DNA chain terminator, was developed over 30 YEARS AGO to destroy cells for cancer therapy! AZT KILLS. Kary Mullis opined that giving patients this drug was ëvoodooí.
African Aids is neither new, nor a pandemic. Only 0.012% of Africans acquire AIDS (WHO). Annual mortality rates for Africa is 12.3 million, so even if we assume all cases are mortalities, that’s only 0.6% of all total annual mortalities!
The HIV-AIDS hypothesis is neither incontrovertible nor sacrosanct. Two things are clear: first, 20 years of HIV research has failed miserably; and second, hundreds of thousands of people are consuming anti-AIDS ‘medicines’ that eventually will kill them. I hope that this story alone is sufficient to overcome the insouciance with which the AIDS controversy has been received, ironically by those self-proclaimed proponents of AIDS victims.
For more information:
http://www.duesberg.com/
http://www.virusmyth.net/
Posted by John Bradford on Jul 17, 2003 at 2:46 AM Ms Hawkins and In These Times unfortunately elide, in this piece of insipid ersatz, over a growing controversy in the medical community: whether or not HIV causes AIDS.
Up until 1984 there were many competing hypotheses on what caused the heterogeneous set of symptoms collectively referred to as AIDS. The CDC had even proposed that it was a ‘lifestyle’ disease. There were several reasons why the medical establishment (in particular the drug companies) chose to advance the HIV-virus hypothesis, namely financial incentive to come up with a single vaccine.Re: AZT. Journalist John Lauritsen has investigated the FDA documents recently released by the Freedom of Information Act that first approved the medicine, and argues that many of the studies were FRAUDULENT. One study in particular (Philip Pizzo et al. 1988) even claimed that giving AZT to children boosted their IQ scores and that the drug should be given to babies! This is despite the fact that 5 of the 21 children died soon after treatment began.
Re:AIDS in Africa, Duesberg writes:African AIDS is caused by malnutrition, parasitic infection and poor sanitation. There are no risk groups in Africa, like drug addicts and homosexuals. It is for this reason that African AIDS is equally distributed between the sexes. Moreover, practically no African AIDS patients have pneumocystis pneumonia, dementia or Kaposi’s sarcoma - the signal diseases of AIDS in the US and Europe. Above all, African AIDS is diagnosed without even attempting an HIV test, which is too expensive for Africa. Thus there is no scientific evidence for the correlation between HIV and African AIDS, only guesses.”
—Dr. Peter Duesberg, at the University of California, Berkeley, isolated the first cancer gene in 1970, and who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. His experience with retroviruses makes him uniquely qualified to address the AIDS controversy.Given this, we should support President Mbekiís scepticism of American ëtreatmentí.
I am not an expert, so I am compelled to provide as much evidence as I can to combat the initial incredulity and obstinate obloquy that these facts usually provoke. I think the least one can do as a reported, and citizen is to evaluate what could be the biggest tragedy in medical history.
Posted by John Bradford on Jul 17, 2003 at 3:06 AM Explains the high rate of HIV/AIDS in black youth. What about the prison experience? Considering proportionally more blacks in prison than should be according to population.
Posted by Carolyn Apsey on Jul 18, 2003 at 2:55 AM Nat is a friend of mine and I am very proud of the way he has taken an active role in the prevention of STDs. He is a proud, couragous person. I enjoyed the article especially the highlight of the rise of HIV in heterosexual because for so long it was ignored as a “People” disease and thought of only as a gay disease. It’s important that all people protect themselves. The other highlight I found important was the segment on “down low” men. Unfortunately society has forced these individuals to fade into the background and unable to express themselves openly. What a sad result. I hope more people can be honest with not only their sexual behavior, but how they are. I think a lot of this behavior is due to the breakdown of the family. No one is around to teach these young men how to respect themselves, how to be themselves, that life is more than sex. How brillant they can be if they only give themseleves the chance.
Posted by Gregory Echols on Jul 18, 2003 at 3:56 PM At the risk of writing way over excess, I will add two more facts that I have found in my weekend research.
First, if you are at all tempted to buy the so-called PCR “HIV” tests sold on this website, DO NOT. According to its INVENTOR, They do not detect HIV at all, but rather, their antibodies, which according to every precedent regarding retroviruses already means your body is immune to it. It does not detect the tiny scrap of genetic material called by some HIV. More importantly, it IS NON-SPECIFIC. Not only does it NOT DETECT HIV, but neither does it detect antibodies specifically targeting HIV. OVER 70 ILLNESSES WILL TEST POSITIVE ON THESE TESTS. So if you have the flu, I suggest you not scare yourself to death (literally).
(By the way, large amounts of the virus aren’t even detectable in people who have died from various AIDS diseases…)Second, the company that first manufactured “poppers” (Burroughs Wellcome) which killed thousands, also was the first to manufacture the highly poisonious AZT… It seems money can be made both killing people, and then proving them with the cure, just as long as it doesn’t actually make them better.
I find the reticence on this issue disturbing. Has our stubborn orthodoxy blinded us to the fact that we don’t know nearly as much about these diseases (pl.) as we think? I would think that we progressives would want to do everything we can to dispel such myopia and ossified habits. This story renders issues such as black urban male sexual guilt inane.. Or maybe I am wrong.. The point is that this story SHOULD be covered.
That’s all…
Posted by John Bradford on Jul 19, 2003 at 12:39 AM First off, my condolences to Nathaniel Marshall. I am a grant writer for a community based agency that provides an array services for underserved New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. I liked your article and would be interested in seeing others on related topics.
Thank you.
Posted by Abigail Astor on Jul 24, 2003 at 9:34 PM I really enjoyed you article. I’ve also know Mr. Marshall for quite sometime and very honor to be in his life. Your article gave me better understanding of the term “On the Down Low”. Even though you mention on the various projects and programs that have developed on serving Blacks population affected and infected there still more to be done.
Posted by Auora Pineda on Jul 25, 2003 at 6:00 PM A carefully researched and sensitive article, and I am impressed to see that Ms Hawkins feels so strongly about the topic that she responds in detail to a reader’s comment.
Not to all the comments, though, and I certainly don’t blame her - certain garrulous, polemic types who have unfortunately made their influence felt here in South Africa, scour the Internet to pour their gall. ‘Insipid ersatz’, indeed. No-one who is living with the disease in their community has time for such self-serving ignorance.
Posted by Carolize on Aug 4, 2003 at 1:28 PM I am a graduate student doing
research on public health campaigns.
How can I get Ms. Hawkins email to
ask her a few questions? Thanks.
Posted by Rachelle Jeanette Johnson on Oct 28, 2003 at 7:26 AM I agree with this story. There is a large population of black men that practice homosexual behavior. The very men who hide behind accepted roles of “Straight Black Ladies Man” is secretly practicing and/or gratifying his sexual fantasies about being with another male. What is responsible for the prevailance of this pandemic? At the heart of the matter is the lack of moral direction passed on by failed religious leaders who both portray black men as good for slavery and not important enough to teach accountability for their actions before God.
The point to draw attention to here is that the first century congregation of Christians had in attendance all of the morally broken individuals who may or may not have had any choice in their leanings from birth in the ways of homosexuality, thievery, drunkeness, audultery and fornication. It has been proven that that early congregation had as members many who formerly practiced the above immoral behavior, yet they were able to cease and walk in the standards of the True God with the help of his spirit.
Read it for yourself in two simple verses…1Corinthians 6:9,10. The point was that homosexual men, ( i.e. to be “Corninthianized”), learned that they could stop that behavior with God’s help.
Many black men have been helped today by Jehovah’s Witnesses to do the same. I am not one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I have seen within it’s six million member organizaiton many, many black men who have gone on to lead very successful lives as single men or married men, without ever taking up the behavior again. It is a desire and an predisposition in which God has the ability to help one control and he promises to totally take away desires that ultimately harm our relationship with him, ourselves and others.
For Black Males, females and males of every culture, race and predisposition, there is Hope! Next time those Witnesses visit your door, stop and listen to their message. They will prove to you from your own Bible that “the powers that be”, both human goverments and false religion, will all be done away with soon. Why not invite a visit like I have?
Posted by Brian on Mar 11, 2004 at 6:50 PM I was about to subscribe to your magazine—then I read your Aids article. If you know this little about Aids, how can you know anything else worth knowing? Look up the material suggested by John Bfadford of Louisiana.
Posted by c turner on Apr 7, 2004 at 7:28 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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