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AIDS Fighters Face a Resistant Form of Apathy Published: April 3, 2005 (Page 3 of 3)
Michelangelo Signorile, the host of a gay-themed talk show on Sirius Satellite Radio, takes a less nuanced view: "If everyone in your group is beautiful, taking steroids, barebacking and H.I.V. positive, having the virus doesn't seem like such a bad thing." It is for that reason that Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, believes the disease is due for an image makeover. He cites a hard-to-miss ad in last month's Out magazine that is embedded with a tiny audio chip and features two robust men on a beach. Opening the magazine sets off the trill of a ringing phone and a man's voice essentially saying he is having too much fun to worry about his chronic illness. Mr. Weinstein has asked the ad's sponsor, Bristol-Myers Squibb, to stop using the ad for the drug, Reyataz. A spokeswoman said the company was re-examining its advertising campaigns. "People are in such denial about how serious H.I.V. is," Mr. Weinstein said. "Unfortunately, the best prevention is seeing people die." Of course, frontline prevention workers hope to avoid a new wave of deaths. At Gay Men's Health Crisis, prevention workers are planning a series of events that seek to promote "connectedness and community." Others are creating antidrug messages that masquerade as packets of meth that can be dropped on dance floors. A series of subway ads unveiled by the state for the first time shifts responsibility to those who are already infected. And then there are people like Daniel Carlson, a former marketing executive who became so disgusted by the number of men soliciting unprotected sex online that he and a friend started a group to combat the prevailing ethos about sex and drugs. In the past two years, the group, H.I.V. Forum, has organized a half-dozen town hall meetings on crystal meth and unprotected sex that have drawn packed houses. "I know it sounds touchy-feely, but if we could just emphasize a little bit more community and brotherhood," Mr. Carlson said. "We have to decide whether we're going to be selfish or whether we're going to care about one another."
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