Some really, really real talk about AIDS from Courtland Milloy in today's Washington Post. In a piece titled "AIDS: D.C.'s Silent Stalker of Women," Milloy righteously bombards America's absurd, maddening, dangerous silence vis-à-vis her AIDS epidemic. And then comes the attack on the black churches. Oh yes he did!

CONTINUED »

Having just learned that two thirds of adolescents aren't using condoms when having sex, this new information is both unsurprising and alarming:

The number of Central Ohio teenagers and young adults infected with HIV has exploded 45 percent in just three years. Of all the Franklin County women living with HIV, nearly three-quarters are African American. As dozens of countries commemorate World AIDS Day on December 1, Central Ohioans need to be reminded that the epidemic continues right here at home.

The Ohio Department of Health reports that HIV infections in Central Ohio match the dramatic increases nationwide, especially in African Americans, youth, and women.

Wrap it up, people!

Suzanne "Africa" Engo, one of MTV and the Kaiser Foundations top 40 youth AIDS activists in the world, is running 858 miles from the UN building in NYC to Oprah Winfrey's Chicago Harpo office on a high school and university tour to raise awareness. She started on the 15th, and yesterday she completed mile 141 in Reading, Penn. Engo originally came to the United States as the daughter of the Cameroonian Ambassador to the U.S.

When we talk about black people and AIDS, our minds often shift to Africa, where the AIDS epidemic has completely destroyed communities and left generations of orphans. A new report from the Black AIDS Institute says that we should also be paying close attention to AIDS in the black American community. According "Left Behind - Black America: A Neglected Priority in the Global AIDS," the number of African Americans with AIDS is comparable to the numbers in some African countries.

CONTINUED »

Alicia Keys submitted an opinion piece for CNN in advance of the July 4th premiere of her documentary, Alicia in Africa, about her travels to the continent and her work there to fight the spread of AIDS.

My first visit to Africa completely changed my world view. I came to understand that AIDS was not simply a deadly disease but a force capable of orphaning children, uprooting communities and stifling economic progress.

What AIDS could not do was suffocate the hope of the remarkable people I met throughout Africa. If people who had suffered such unthinkable devastation could maintain hope, then I could certainly hope for an end to this pandemic in my lifetime.

With this goal in mind, [AIDS activist Leigh Blake] and I started Keep A Child Alive in 2003 and our clinic and orphan sites operate in six countries, supporting approximately 45,000 children and their families who have been victimized by AIDS.

In a poll conducted by British newspaper The Independent, more than 35 AIDS researches in the UK and America shared bleak news: few doctors searching for an HIV vaccine are very optimistic.

… just two were now more optimistic about the prospects for an HIV vaccine than they were a year ago; only four said they were more optimistic now than they were five years ago.

Nearly two thirds believed that an HIV vaccine will not be developed within the next 10 years and some of them said that it may take at least 20 more years of research before a vaccine can be used to protect people either from infection or the onset of Aids.

CONTINUED »

The long, discouraging, and expensive struggle to find an AIDS vaccine has hit a major road block, and scientists are left confused as to what went wrong and where to go from here. Two field tests for the "most promising contender" out of the possible AIDS vaccines, "made from a common respiratory virus called adenovirus type 5 that had been crippled and then loaded with fragments of HIV," have been halted after it was discovered in one of the field tests that the vaccine not only didn't prevent the virus but may have also increased the risk of contracting it.

That National Institutes of Health are meeting next week to figure out where to go from here with the AIDS vaccine program. But scientists are saying the prognosis is grim.

"None of the products currently in the pipeline has any reasonable chance of being effective in field trials," Ronald C. Desrosiers, a molecular geneticist at Harvard University, declared last month at an AIDS conference in Boston. "We simply do not know at the present time how to design a vaccine that will be effective against HIV."

If you're waiting for the good news, there wasn't much of any in this story, sadly. [WP]

CONDOMS, CONDOMS, CONDOMS According to CDC data, there was an 80 percent rise in HIV infections among gay black men from 2001 to 2005. Eighty percent. "This dramatic increase in HIV rates is yet another in a series of clarion calls to Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services that young people need culturally relevant and realistic sex education to protect their health and save their lives," urged Debra Hauser, Executive Vice President at Advocates for Youth.

"The fact that this report comes on the heels of new data showing that 1 in 4 teen girls has had a sexually transmitted disease is further proof that the Administration's failed abstinence-only policy is putting young people in danger."

• R. Kelly says his publicist knew he was dating her daughter all along. [TMZ]

• A dead prez concert ends in violence after a fight in the audience turns into a riot. [XXL]

• For some African AIDS patients, times are a-changing. [LAT]

• There's no mercy for men who murder their pregnant wives. None! [CNN]

Happy Weekend!

I never knew that the inspiration for Jermaine Stewart's "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off" was a response to the growing AIDS crisis in the 80s, but that's what Wikipedia tells me. It also tells me that Stewart died of AIDS-related cancer in 1997. So that's a downer, but, still, enjoy the flashback (if you're old enough to remember it).