CHAPS off-message

In 2000, the Home Office published a consultation paper on the law relating to manslaughter in which they said (section 4.3): ".. we made it clear that the Government proposed that only the intentional transmission of disease should be a criminal offence. This was in part because the Government is determined to ensure that people […]

A few years ago, someone gave a presentation to a semi-official body on transgendered people and sex work. Most were doing sex work to pay for gender reassignment surgery. However she said that around 70-80% of MTF sex workers were HIV+ and gave several reasons for this, including being more vulnerable to taking more money […]

Making STI testing easier is a Good Thing, but there are some things to think about before having it as a feature of BiCon, for example. In no particular order.. Costs: time and money. Let's say we're a responsible bunch and half of us want to be tested. That's around 100-200 people, and that's likely […]

Rectal microbicides are chemicals which are designed to be put up the anus into the rectum to kill off microbes that cause STIs when having anal sex with an infected partner. Ideally, they'd protect both the receptive and insertive partner. Much more research is being done on vaginal microbicides, partly because of 'moral' issues (i.e. […]

Every so often, there are stories in the media like this one: Men who want to lower their chances of contracting HIV should be circumcised, the world's leading health experts said yesterday. Having the foreskin removed lowers the risk of catching the virus by 60 per cent, they said. (The Metro, London 29th March 2007) […]

This report was commissioned from Sigma Research in 1994 by the UK government's Health Education Authority (HEA), then in charge of official HIV prevention work. I strongly suspect it was in order to demonstrate that, as the head of the work with gay and bisexual men* loved to say, bisexual men are "a minority of […]

The first one was on 1st December 1988, so this year's is the twenty third one. How many do you think have had a theme mentioning gay and bisexual men? None. (I don't count various wishy-washy 'all in it together' themes as being inclusive, any more than only saying 'gay' as bi-inclusive.) Aids was first […]

Because the person in charge of the THT website does not understand the importance of keeping links valid, they've been broken several times since writing the original articles. I'll have download links from here soon…

So someone on a uk bi list posted recently, naming one, 'Silken Secret'. My first reaction on reading that was "Erm, what would do that, apart from spermicide?" (Which I hope you all know is a no-no for this as the damage it does to the skin – the main one was originally designed as […]

Particularly given the Damilola Taylor result dominating the papers and the airport security alert radio and TV.. .. but, at fucking last, there's been an acquittal in a UK HIV tranmission trial. A clueful defence team, helped by THT, used a combination of expert evidence and the behaviour of the complainant to show that there […]

There are three in the series, produced by the then 'Living well with HIV team', and not all of these are part of the CHAPS partnership. But see what they are: Relationships and Sex for Gay Men – perhaps surprisingly, the first edition of this did have "to have children" as one of the reasons […]