AIDS ON RISE AMONG MALES 15 TO 22.Byline: Robert Monroe Staff Writer Complacent because of potent drugs that prolong the lives of people with AIDS The People With AIDS (PWA) Self-Empowerment Movement was a movement of those diagnosed with AIDS and grew out of San Francisco. The PWA Self-Empowerment Movement believes that those diagnosed as having AIDS should "take charge of their own life, illness, and care, and to minimize , young gay men in Los Angeles have been contracting the deadly virus at a rate faster than the national average but still slower than in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , according to a report to be published today. The findings, in the Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association is an international peer-reviewed general medical journal, published 48 times per year by the American Medical Association. JAMA is the most widely circulated medical journal in the world. , suggest that public health messages are not successful in reaching young people at risk for the disease. Too young to have witnessed the ravages rav·age v. rav·aged, rav·ag·ing, rav·ages v.tr. 1. To bring heavy destruction on; devastate: A tornado ravaged the town. 2. of the first wave of AIDS and aware that anti-AIDS drug cocktails can keep the illness in check, they are engaging in risky sex, said Wesley Ford, a co-investigator in the study for the county Department of Public Health. ``If I get sick, they'll have something for it: There is that laissez-faire attitude,'' Ford said. ``But that's part of the risk-taking behavior that's associated with younger men.'' Between 1994 and 1998, health officials surveyed 509 boys and men 15 to 22 years old and screened them for human immunodeficiency virus human immunodeficiency virus n. HIV. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) A transmissible retrovirus that causes AIDS in humans. , the precursor to AIDS. Of the 42 men who were HIV HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), either of two closely related retroviruses that invade T-helper lymphocytes and are responsible for AIDS. There are two types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is responsible for the vast majority of AIDS in the United States. positive, 80 percent did not know they were infected. The percentage of Los Angeles County respondents who were infected, 8.3 percent, exceeded a national rate of 7.2 percent. In New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , young gay men had an infection rate of 12.1 percent. In the overall population, HIV infection rates run less than 0.05 percent. The jarring finding reverses steady declines of new HIV rates reported locally and across the country since their peak in the early 1990s. New HIV infection rates had dropped from an estimated 13,000 in 1990 to 2,000 in 1999, said Nicole Russo-Okamoto, spokeswoman for AIDS Project L.A. ``We had thought it was on the wane, and to see these numbers, it's scary,'' she said. ``There's this younger group that's so far removed from the AIDS epidemic that it's not in their thought process.'' Russo-Okamoto and Ford said that HIV prevention messages need to be changed. Rather than campaigns aimed at changing sexual behavior, Ford suggested public health agencies emphasize establishing safe sex practices among young people having sex for the first time. ``We need to find what kinds of messages work for them,'' Ford said. |
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