from Medical Issues

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.'"