(RED) Digital Music: Fighting AIDS in Africa

A new digital music service called (RED) Wire, co-founded by Bono, promises to deliver exclusive tracks from U2, Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, Dixie Chicks, Jay-Z, John Legend and Sheryl Crow for only $ 5 per month! Launching today, December 1, the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, the service donates a portion of its profits to fight AIDS in Africa.

(RED) Wire is an extension of the (RED) organization, which Bobby Shriver and U2 front man Bono co-founded to combat AIDS in Africa. Subscribers to the service will also receive tracks from underground artists along with jokes and poems recited by actors.

According to the brain behind the project and Hear Music founder Don MacKinnon;

“The goal was something that wasn’t just a one-off CD, but an ongoing service that would generate an ongoing flow of money.”

Subscribers will also receive updates on how their donations are being used. Half the fee will go to the Global Fund, through which (RED) provides AIDS medicines for women and children.

Visit the site at REDWIRE.com!

HIV on the Rise in Hong Kong

An estimated 33% of gay and bisexual men in Hong Kong will be infected with HIV by 2020 if prevention programs which promote safe sex fail to work, experts claim.

The primary cause of HIV in Hong Kong is person to person contact through sex. The number of gay and bisexual men diagnosed with the HIV has risen sharply since 2003.

This rising trend among gay and bisexual men hold true in many countries.  HIV drugs, which can control the virus but not cure the infection are more readily available.

As of now, an estimated four percent of Hong Kong’s gay and bisexual men are HIV-positive and genetic analyses of virus samples found three HIV strains within the local community.

Challenging the Idea of Normalcy

From emorywheel.com:

Social justice advocate Jessica Pettitt, who is often referred to as the “Margaret Cho of diversity training,” encouraged students to confront the prejudices of their subconscious on Tuesday night through her workshop “Just Rescue.”

The event, held as a part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month, was sponsored by the Center for Women, Office of LGBT Life and the Office of Multicultural Programs and Services.

A self-described lesbian married to a man that used to be a woman named Lauren, Pettitt’s interactive workshop was designed to help students identify assumptions about people’s identities, through unconventional methods.

“I’m not here to tell you not to make judgments, but in order to make change it’s important to be aware of your judgments and what they do. We’re all imperfect,” Pettitt said in her opening statement.

She then grouped off audience members and presented each team with a scenario requiring them to save 10 of 14 storm victims stranded on a rooftop based on descriptive titles of the victims, which included an HIV-positive person, a pregnant black teen, a 330-pound man and a drag queen, among others.

Read the rest by clicking here.

Study Shows HIV Dates Back to 1900

According to a study released Wednesday by the University of Arizona in Tucson. researchers now believe the virus which causes AIDS has been around since about 1900. The genetic analysis of a biopsy sample recently uncovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has convinced biologist Michael Worobey that the virus has been in existence for over 100 years, which is about 30 years earlier than previously thought.

The most common form of the virus, HIV - 1, has many similarities to a simian virus, which originated in chimpanzees. Today, over 33 million people worldwide are living with the virus. It has been difficult for researchers to figure out when the virus actually crossed species however.

The first cases of HIV in the U.S. were discovered in 1981, and the oldest evidence of the virus in humans is a 1959 blood sample taken from a man who lived in what was then the Belgian Congo.

Black Gay Men Bear Brunt of US HIV Epidemic

From an article posted in the New York Blade:

After announcing last month that the annual number of HIV infections in the U.S. is 40 percent higher than previously thought, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention confirmed this morning in a conference call with reporters that young black gay and bisexual men are the population seeing the highest rates of new HIV infections.

	Kevin Fenton, director of HIV/AIDS division at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, called new HIV incidence data about black gay men ‘alarming.’ (Photo courtesy CDC)

Of the more than 56,000 Americans diagnosed with HIV in 2006, 72 percent were gay and bisexual men; of those men, 46 percent were white, 35 percent were black and 19 percent were Latino.

But CDC officials announced “there were more new HIV infections in young black [gay and bisexual] men aged 13-29 than any other age or racial group” of gay men.

Read the rest by clicking here.

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