|
from Medical Issues
HIV "Bug Chaser" Memorialized
January 16, 2006 -
British editor Mary Wakefield, writing in The Sunday Telegraph (1/15/2006)
describes her shock at discovering the underworld of bug chasing among
homosexual males. Her investigation into bug chasing was prompted by the funeral
of a young man who recently died after deliberately becoming infected with HIV.
Wakefield observed that the young man had invited his HIV-positive boyfriend to
move into his apartment with him. Though he was aware of the dangers of HIV, he
soon developed the disease and brain cancer. His HIV-positive friend had also
infected a previous partner and that man had died not long ago.
Wakefield was puzzled over the decision of this young man to risk becoming HIV
infected and recalled reading an article in Rolling Stone about bug
chasers--individuals who deliberately seek to become infected with HIV.
"I remembered being skeptical at the time--it seemed too creepy. After tens of
millions have died of Aids worldwide, after billions spent on medication, how
could anyone seek it out?"
Her research led her to a gay underground on the Internet that described the
life of bug chasers. She observed, "... there was a darker side, the
romanticizing of Aids itself. Google led me underground, to gay clubbers with
'HIV neg' tattooed on their biceps as an invitation for others to infect them,
to online chats about HIV-spreading sex parties, talk of 'conceiving' the virus
like a pregnancy and the intense intimacy of infecting a partner. 'It offers a
kind of permanent partnership,' said a journalist for a gay magazine, 'a
connection outside time.'"
Additional Reading: A Psychoanalyst's Perspective: AIDS And The Death Wish
Updated: 8 February 2008
|
