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Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren

The question is out there, rattling windows like a bomb blast. Who owns HIV? According to a controversial ad campaign just launched by the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center, LGBT people own it. This is not news—we’ve been told we own it for twenty-five years now. The word AIDS has been nailed to our forehead, with gay and bi men being stigmatized even in developing countries where transmission is known to be mainly heterosexual. But the two billboards that went up in West Hollywood recently, along with posters at gay watering holes around town, stated: HIV IS A GAY DISEASE. OWN IT. END IT.

It’s not the first “own it” campaign from Better World Advertising, a San Francisco-based agency that positions its ads as “social marketing.” In 2000 their “HIV Stops With Me” touched off similar controversy. In a Left Field column I pointed out that this campaign was not the “community-based” response that it claimed to be, though BWA tapped some local gay and bi men to be poster boys for the campaign. “Stops With Me” was actually a government campaign funded by the CDC and coordinated by the San Francisco Department of Public Health—one of five such programs in major U.S. cities. I was intrigued by KaiserNetwork reports referring to the staff of Better World Advertising as “officials” rather than “ad executives.” No doubt it’s appropriate to refer to private media corporations this way if they become an arm of federal hype.

In West Hollywood, reaction to the new campaign was swift and sharp. The WeHo News, edited by Ryan Gierach, raced to publish pros and cons. The pro side quoted L.A. Center director Lorri Jean, who said, “In Los Angeles County, gay and bisexual men make up less than 7% of the population but account for more than 75% of the people living with HIV/AIDS….Most alarmingly, a new generation of young gay men has grown up accepting the epidemic as a community norm.” As a con, Gierach quoted AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Michael Weinstein, who commented acidly that prevention “won’t happen by placing ads and hoping people talk about it.”

More scathing was psychotherapist Ken Howard, who said in his editorial, “I am deeply offended by this campaign….It is a throwback to the early days of the AIDS crisis when anti-gay forces in this country found in AIDS just another ‘justification’ for hate and discrimination.” The uproar spilled over into the L.A. Times, with blogger Michael Petrelis asking the Times and the Center why nobody pointed out recent L.A. County statistics showing that gay and bi male HIV/AIDS infections are down, not up.

While the CDC has gay people arguing among themselves over if and how they own HIV, the agency wants all Americans to own HIV, and is moving public-health law towards casting the widest possible screening. Less interested in prevention these days (prevention campaigns haven’t worked too well), the CDC wants to finger elusive citizens who don’t know they’re positive; a growing number are said to be heterosexuals and teens. In a recent shift of policy, the CDC recommends that Americans ages thirteen to sixty-four be screened as a part of regular health checks. HIV tests will be bundled with routine lab panels on blood sugar, liver function, cholesterol, etc. Right now compliance is voluntary, but the day will surely come when it’s mandatory. The new policy would seem to render ad campaigns moot, since infected gay and bi men will be reeled in by the wider screening and compelled to get treatment.

Is it a mixed message that government says HIV is a gay disease, then turns around and tells everybody else that it’s their disease? Well, this is the same government that subsidizes both tobacco growing and antismoking programs.

The National Prevention Information Network wonders who will own the costs involved. They pointed out, “Some medical centers have offered the test for free, thanks to government funding and support from companies like OraSure Technologies, one of four US firms making rapid-result HIV tests. But such programs will eventually end, raising the issue of who pays.…Health insurers typically do not cover HIV testing in the emergency department.” The initial HIV test may be only $10, but a follow-up confirmation of a positive result jumps to $100—and many people affected by this policy shift will be low-income people (including teens) who have no health insurance.

It’s hard to own it if you can’t pay for it.

Who Owns HIV?