Sullywatch today offers a fine critique of Andrew Sullivan's latest attempt to suggest that HIV is no biggee (you know, doesn't need to cramp your style in the online barebacking community, etc.). We offer here a small addendum to their analysis, regarding this part of Sully's post:
Compare the kind of medical ramifications of testing positive for Type 2 diabetes with testing positive for HIV. Your life is not as definitively shortened with HIV as it is with diabetes; the treatment is far less onerous; the lifestyle changes are fewer, compared with daily injections, monitoring your diet, and so on.
Er, um, huh? If you have untreated diabetes, you're in trouble; if you have untreated HIV you're in (probably bigger) trouble. Both might shorten your life. But clearly Andrew doesn't know anything about type 2 diabetes, which doesn't always necessitate injections (and when it does, the needles are so small they don't hurt). Given the huge number of people walking around with untreated diabetes, it's terribly irresponsible to suggest that type 2 treatment is somehow more onerous than HIV treatment. Kind of like insisting that positive HIV status doesn't mean you need to make "lifestyle changes," by the way.
UPDATE 23 JUNE: Sully provides an even more bizarrely upbeat take on being HIV positive for The Advocate -- a link not currently provided on his website -- which triggers this bitterly incisive retort from Michelangelo Signorile. And Sullivan is clearly fixated on the analogy to diabetes:
But the bottom line is that HIV is fast becoming another diabetes.
UPDATE 24 JUNE: Now the link to the Advocate piece is there, plus a third spoon of sugar:
From being an automatic death sentence, it's now in the diabetes spectrum, if you get tested early and treated effectively.
Compare the kind of medical ramifications of testing positive for Type 2 diabetes with testing positive for HIV. Your life is not as definitively shortened with HIV as it is with diabetes; the treatment is far less onerous; the lifestyle changes are fewer, compared with daily injections, monitoring your diet, and so on.
Er, um, huh? If you have untreated diabetes, you're in trouble; if you have untreated HIV you're in (probably bigger) trouble. Both might shorten your life. But clearly Andrew doesn't know anything about type 2 diabetes, which doesn't always necessitate injections (and when it does, the needles are so small they don't hurt). Given the huge number of people walking around with untreated diabetes, it's terribly irresponsible to suggest that type 2 treatment is somehow more onerous than HIV treatment. Kind of like insisting that positive HIV status doesn't mean you need to make "lifestyle changes," by the way.
UPDATE 23 JUNE: Sully provides an even more bizarrely upbeat take on being HIV positive for The Advocate -- a link not currently provided on his website -- which triggers this bitterly incisive retort from Michelangelo Signorile. And Sullivan is clearly fixated on the analogy to diabetes:
But the bottom line is that HIV is fast becoming another diabetes.
UPDATE 24 JUNE: Now the link to the Advocate piece is there, plus a third spoon of sugar:
From being an automatic death sentence, it's now in the diabetes spectrum, if you get tested early and treated effectively.