A United Nations report on Aids has put into statistics what could easily -- and to our frustration and horror -- already be deduced.

Michel Sidibe, the head of UNAIDS, said "it is unacceptable" that 85 countries still have laws criminalizing same sex relations among adults, including seven that impose the death penalty for homosexual practices. He called a proposed Ugandan law that would impose the death penalty for some gays "very unfortunate" and expressed hope it will never be approved. At a time when UNAIDS is scaling up its program and seeking universal access to HIV treatment, Sidibe said he was "very scared" because bad laws are being introduced by countries making it impossible for these at risk groups to have access to ...

A new report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention continues to show that gay men are disproportionately afflicted by HIV/Aids.

The CDC’s report, out yesterday, finds that men who have sex with men (MSM) are over 44 times more likely to contract HIV than other men, and 46 times more likely to contract syphilis than other men.

"The CDC's newly released statistics highlight how HIV continues to disproportionately affect gay men more than any other group in the U.S.," Marjorie Hill, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, said in a statement. "Greater prevention efforts targeted toward this population are clearly needed. We commend President Obama for proposing a new $28 million initiative in his Fiscal ...

Disturbing news in the journal Nature Medicine reveals that HIV parent cells can hide in bone marrow when a patient is taking medication, only to unleash itself to wreak havoc if a patient stops drug therapy for any amount of time.

TopNewsUs reports:

Kathleen Collins, an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan, and the Lead Author of a Study said, “We found there was evidence that HIV in fact, does infectthe bone marrow progenitor cells or parent cells that are the source of all of the different blood lineages in the body and moreover that HIV can take on a latent form and so we were able to detect the presence of virus ending cells even after patients had been on therapy for years”.

"I don't know how many...

New studies out of the Netherlands bring good news, but with possible negative implications. The research, presented at the 17th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, shows that 25 year olds who are today diagnosed to be HIV positive can expect to live normal or near-normal lifespans, as long as treatment begins shortly after infection.

Men and women diagnosed aged 25 could expect to live just five months less than HIV-negative people and men diagnosed at age 55 would live 1.3 years less (women 1.5 years less). For patients diagnosed with HIV (but not AIDS) symptoms the figure was two years shorter for men and women diagnosed at 25, and six and 7.5 years shorter for men and women respectively diagnosed at 55.

The researchers...

One would think when doing a study on consumer spending habits, a survey of us Americans -- notorious for our love for shopping (as well as our avoidance of AmEx collections calls) -- would be included. Not so, believes OutNow, a leading global market research company in charge of an upcoming landmark GLBT study.

Such important items vital to the knowledge and politics of the American GLBT community within our own country such as our consumer habits, parenting, media usage, incomes, education levels, inspirations, discrimantions and more will be absent from the world's largest-ever survey of gay communities.

Included in the research, however, will be Latin America, as well as a handful of European countries such as France, Spain, Italy and...

Perhaps the key to our struggle for equality in this country boils down to semantics.

Both sides on the fight for civil rights employ the weapon -- whether it's our oppressors slinging venomous words like "fags” or “homosexuals” in various contexts or our side wielding weapons like “bigot.”

But a clever poll by CBS highlights the working factors in language that we have to deal with. Seems like the American public responds a bit more negatively to the word “homosexuals” than it does to “gay men and lesbians.”

What do you think of the response elicited by the use of the two different terms?

A new poll out from Quinnipiac finds that a majority of Americans support letting GLBT servicemembers serve openly in the military, but believe there should be a limit on the amount of sexuality said members display.

The poll, conducted February 2 to February 8, surveyed 2,617 voters nationwide, out of which 57% (to 33%) support letting gays serve openly. Out of those polled, 66% went even further to label Don't Ask, Don't Tell as discriminatory.

Not discriminatory for a majority of voters is their comfort level with letting GLBT servicemembers be themselves on the job. When asked if said servicemembers should face restrictions when exhibiting their sexual orientation on the job, 54% of those polled said yes, compared with 37% responding...

No matter the amount of Pat Robertsons or intensity of Westboro Baptist Church protests, we arent’ going anywhere, at least if that big queen Mother Nature has anything to do with it. We all know that being gay is natural, but since that's the case, how is the gay gene passed on since we’re less likely to procreate (though we sure do try)?

Researchers have studied the question, and hypothesize that the answer is because we make really, really great uncles.

From the Montreal Gazette:

Canadian researchers say they have found the first evidence to back up the theory that gay men have the evolutionary advantage of being "super uncles", a way of enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives and — indirectly, at least — making it...

In a discovery that could result in advances in HIV/Aids treatment, UCLA researchers (along with teams from four other institutions) have found a ‘broad spectrum’ antiviral that could be effective on a wide range of deadly diseases.

The latest possible weapon against a host of afflictions earns its firepower from attacking the lipid-membrane of a specific class of viruses.

According to Dr. Benhur Lee, primary researcher on the study, "the small molecule [of the broad spectrum anti-viral] binds to both cellular and viral membranes, but its preferential ability to inactivate viral membranes comes from its ability to exploit the biogenic reparative ability of metabolically active cells versus static viral membranes. That is, at antiviral...

In other dating site news (see eHarmony post below), OKCupid has conducted a massive scientific study on social network profile photos, arriving at a wonderful academic theory: headless shots showing off abs work wonders! Great news for those of us discreetly posting to Craigslist or Manhunt or A4A, wondering if we'd get more response if we butched it up and revealed our mugs.

The study of over 7,000 profiles and photos reveal that ab-shots gain nearly 1.5 more meetings than those with clothed photos. Though a caveat: the statistics decrease as the photo owner's age. It seems possible interested parties would much rather see a shirtless 19 year old than a shirtless 45 year old, for some reason :(

And another thing, the numbers reflect a...

A study published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry has found that adults who were victims of bullying as children experience lifelong physical and mental health problems.

According to MSNBC:

Adults who were bullied as children were more likely than others to suffer from depression and anxiety, as well as a host of physical ills, including fatigue, pain and a greater susceptibility to colds.

The researchers asked nearly 3,000 Australian adults about their physical and mental health and whether they had experienced severe, routine bullying by peers as a child. Just under 19 percent reported that they had been victims of regular and traumatizing bullying, either physical or verbal.

After taking into account factors...

Yesterday we had the GLBT cancer disparity news, today we have unsettling news on the HIV front.

A team of researchers have just published a study on the website for the journal Science that forecasts drug-resistant strains of HIV emerging within the next five years. Scientists developed a ground-breaking computer model to study and predict current trends with the virus to arrive at the bleak news.

New research based on a novel mathematical model predicts that a wave of drug-resistant HIV strains will emerge in San Francisco within the next five years. These strains could prove disastrous by hindering control of the HIV pandemic.

The model showed that surprisingly many of the drug-resistant HIV strains that have evolved over the past last...