Kind of a long read but interesting.

Do some gay men want to contract HIV? Researchers grapple with bug chasing
Thu Sep 21, 6:05 PM

By Jeremy Hainsworth

VANCOUVER (CP) - Lloyd Norquay is HIV positive and he's mystified as to why anyone else would want to be.


Norquay, who manages a gay bathhouse in Vancouver, says he's been approached by men who don't have the virus that causes AIDS but who tell him they want to be infected by him.


"I usually try to find out why, if they're interested in talking at all, and then ask them questions as to why they're wanting to do this," Norquay said.


"Nobody has a real answer."


In the gay community, they're called bug chasers. If he were willing, Norquay would be referred to as a gift giver.


Whether they actually exist or whether they're simply part of the fantasy life that's rife on the Internet is a matter of debate among researchers and even Norquay isn't quite sure.


He said whenever he's been approached by bug chasers online, they never show up for a meeting in the real world.


But medical officials and AIDS organizations say even the notion that AIDS may be a fetish among some gay men suggests that 25 years worth of work to build education and tolerance about the disease hasn't been enough.


Phillip Banks, director of HIV prevention for AIDS Vancouver, said with AIDS infection rates rising once more, some young gay men see becoming infected with AIDS as just a matter of time.


"That sense of inevitablity for some was so stressful and such a burden that many people found relief with an HIV infection," he said.


He said a gay young man today has a 50 per cent chance of being HIV positive by the time he reaches his late 40s.


"If there are people who are so impacted psychologically, emotionally by the existence of HIV in their communities that they feel they would be better off to become (infected) and just have it done with, then that's a significant issue that needs to be addressed."


Michael Graydon, a researcher at Carleton University in Ottawa, studied the bug chasers and gift givers via online newsgroups for his master's thesis which he presented to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in 2004.


"Sometimes it was described as the gift of death," Graydon said in a recent interview. "Other times, it was described as the gift of the positive brotherhood."


He said one gay man told him he wanted to contract the virus sooner rather than later so "he could feel more like a gay man, which to me, kind of summed up everything.


"These are guys that are the products of a virulently homophobic culture, who've been viciously stigmatized because of HIV for 25 years. They believe being gay means death. Being gay means getting AIDS. Being gay means dying early. This is what's supposed to happen.


"They would even say they want to get it over with. Gift givers would offer to end the waiting."

Stories about the phenomenon started surfacing in the mid-1990s, shortly after the development of the AIDS cocktail drug treatment was announced, Graydon said.

It first came to the mainstream community's attention with the 2003 film The Gift by Louise Hogarth, an Academy Award winning director.

At the time of the film's release, Hogarth said she wanted HIV/AIDS back in the headlines. By pegging her film to something bound to be controversial, she helped renew dialogue about the crisis.

"AIDS was viewed as a short-term health crisis in the beginning and the early strategies worked," she said in the film's press kit.

"Everyone was terrified of getting it. The prevention efforts were successful and the infection rate was reduced significantly, but then people stopped talking about AIDS. They viewed it as a treatable, manageable disease. The pharmaceutical ads and the safe sex campaigns inadvertently glamourized and eroticized HIV/AIDS."

Banks called the notion of HIV as fetish "fascinating yet scandalous," but he noted if it exists, bug chasing is something practised by a very small minority who are not representative of the homosexual community.

"The majority of gay men in this country are consistent in their efforts to maintain sexual safety for themselves and for their sexual partners," Banks said.

"My fear with this is that people will look at rising HIV infection rates among gay men and say: 'They're bringing it on themselves."'

However, other researchers aren't convinced anyone would actively try to contract the AIDS virus.

Dr. Michael Rekart of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control had not heard of bug chasing and was alarmed by the notion.

"It would be an attempt at suicide," Rekart said, saying a death from AIDS is a horrible one.

"And it's not curable. I can't imagine why someone would do that."

Seth Kalichman, a psychology professor at the University of Connecticut who specializes in AIDS behavioral research, is also skeptical.

"I'm not aware of any shred of actual evidence," he said.

"There are mentally ill people all around the world. They want to kill presidents and want to give and get AIDS. I'm not even aware of a truly documented case."

Even Graydon isn't totally convinced.

"Are there men out there for all kinds of reasons deciding they want to be HIV positive? Possibly. Probably," he said.

"Are they actually acting on that? Maybe. I would think this is quite a small minority of people."