Joseph Hawkins: This abstract was provided by Joseph Hawkins.
This book is marked by an anti-homosexual bias and repeatedly refers to the need to return to “biblical morality” in the need to promote sexual abstinence among young people and those not in monogamous relationships. Nevertheless, mixed in with the homophobia are also questions which bear consideration. The author calls attention to the prime need of public health programs, which is to protect those who have not been infected. He gives the example of earlier public health campaigns, which relied on locating carriers through widespread testing (he urges massive routine use of the inexpensive saliva Orasure test, or quicker means of testing where results are available within minutes, to be done in schools, hospital admissions, STD clinics, bloodbanks, etc.) and contact tracing. He seems to suggest isolating HIV carriers from general society, to prevent further infection of younger people. In turn, he is critical of the current reliance almost solely on educational campaigns as ineffective.
For example, this book points out the weakness of safe-sex campaigns which put all their faith in condoms as barriers to HIV infection, ignoring how often condoms break, slide off, or leak spermal fluids.
There is a lot of distortion in this book, but some points need to be further addressed by rational health care providers who can weed out the author's erotophobic bias in order to help prevent further HIV infection for the next generation of gay people, bisexuals, and others.
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