Blacks AIDS Group Issues Grim Report

Yesterday the Black AIDS Institute issued a grim report that will surely be the subject of much discussion at next week's International AIDS Conference.

HIV-AIDS is affecting black gay men in the United States on a scale unseen among any other group in the developed world, said a report issued Wednesday ahead of the International AIDS Conference. So grave is the crisis that in some US cities, one in two black men who have sex with other men are HIV positive, according to the report from the Black AIDS Institute, the only national HIV-AIDS think tank focusing on African Americans. "AIDS in America is a black disease, no matter how you look at it," its president and chief executive Phill Wilson, who is himself HIV positive, said ahead of Sunday's opening of the six-day global conference. "The best lens through which to figure out what AIDS looks like in America is to look at AIDS in black America," he said in an interview, adding that it was time to "jump-start a new conversation... and build a robust response" to the crisis.

According to the 74-page report, while black gay men only constitute one out of 500 Americans, they account for one out of four new HIV infections. The group's head added this withering quote: "There are almost no national LGBT organizations today that give a rat's ass about the lives of black gay men as they are impacted by HIV-AIDS, and that's disgraceful."