DOWN LOW LOWDOWN:

Secret gay encounters of black men could be raising women's infection rate (Jason B. Johnson, May 1, 2005, SF Chronicle)

Health officials have worried for years about the high rate of HIV among African Americans. Now the federal Centers for Disease Control is examining how one group, known as men on the "down low," could be spreading the disease among black women.

Men on the down low have sex with other men while keeping a heterosexual public identity. Recent books and articles about black men on the DL, as it is also called, have raised concerns that they pass HIV to unsuspecting wives and girlfriends.

But because the down low is defined by secrecy, almost nothing is known about the number of men of any race who are on the down low, how many have HIV or AIDS, or their sexual activity.

At a time when black women are being diagnosed with HIV at a rate 20 times that of white women, five CDC studies will be among the first to try to learn how many white, black, Asian and Latino men fit the down-low profile; identify how, if at all, being on the down low differs from being "in the closet," and determine whether down-low men have a role in infecting women with HIV.

Most black women with HIV say they were infected through heterosexual contact, but it isn't known how their male partners were infected -- by sex with other men, or by using contaminated needles to inject drugs.

"We need to take a step back when we look at the down-low phenomenon," said Gregg Millett, a behavioral scientist with the CDC division on HIV/AIDS. "There's very little that is known."

We know this much, they can't get it from men who are straight non-junkies.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 1, 2005 8:22 AM