Continued: 'Second wave' of AIDS epidemic feared in U.S.

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WASHINGTON - The number of young gay men being diagnosed with the HIV infection is rising by 12 percent a year, with the steepest upward trend in young black men, according to a new report.

The double-digit increase in young gay men is roughly 10 times higher than in the homosexual community overall, where the number of new infections is going up about 1.5 percent a year.

The report, released Thursday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), appears to confirm impressions that a "second-wave" AIDS epidemic is underway in gay America.

"These men represent a new generation that has not been personally affected by AIDS in the same way that their older peers were," said Richard Wolitski, acting director of HIV/AIDS prevention at CDC.

The new data cover 33 states. Whether it reflects the entire country is unknown, although the states include New York, Florida, New Jersey and Texas, all of which have large numbers of HIV-infected people.

The study found that homosexual men were the only "risk group" in which the number of new infections rose annually from 2001 through 2006. (Epidemiologists prefer the term "men who have sex with men," or "MSM," as many of them do not identify themselves as homosexual or gay.) In contrast, injecting drug-users, homosexual men who injected drugs and heterosexuals each showed declines in new infections over that period.

In the 13- to 24-year-old group, the average annual increase was 12 percent, compared to a 1 percent decline in 25- to 44-year-olds and a 3 percent rise in gay men 45 and older.

In the youngest age bracket, the yearly rise averaged 8 percent among Hispanics, 9 percent among whites and 15 percent among blacks.

Previous studies have found that gay black men on average have fewer sex partners, are less likely to use drugs and are no more likely to have unprotected intercourse than gay white men. Consequently, their higher rate of infection doesn't appear to arise from riskier behavior.

Instead, it reflects the higher prevalence of HIV -- as well as syphilis and gonorrhea, which increase a person's susceptibility to HIV -- in the black population.

"When you see a 15 percent yearly increase, that is an epidemic that is out of control," said Phill Wilson, head of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. "And yet we don't see a response that recognizes it is an epidemic out of control."

Ron Simmons, president of Us Helping Us, an AIDS service organization for gay black men, said the revolution in anti-retroviral therapy in the last decade appears to have lessened the fear of HIV infection.

"I can remember going to a funeral every four or five days. Now, if you talk to some of these young men, they say, 'If I do get infected, I will simply take the blue pill or the pink pill, like my friend'," he said.

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