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ATLANTA — 11Alive News is sounding the alarm.

Research shows African-American women, many living in Atlanta, are being infected with HIV — so much so that the new cases are being compared to African countries.

Data collected in 2009 from the health departments in Clayton, Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Douglas and Gwinnett counties indicates infection rates of HIV and AIDS, respectively, as follows:

Fulton: 4,213 and 7,342

DeKalb: 3,257 and 3,983

Clayton: 847 and 943

For more information about HIV/AIDS testing:

SisterLove, Inc.: http://www.sisterlove.org
HIV Prevential Trials Network: http://www.fhi360.com
Centers for Disease Control – Take Charge. Take the Test: http://www.hivtest.org/takecharge

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Christopher Peña,

For seven years, Peña was employed at various Burger King restaurants, but three months after he disclosed his HIV status to a supervisor, he was fired.

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The Huffington Post reports:

Peña and his lawyers claim the dismissal violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, the civil-rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability and covers people who are HIV positive.

Burger King did not respond to requests seeking comment, and the company has not yet filed a response in court to Peña’s complaint. Victor Viramontes, a lawyer for Pena who is senior counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said his group sees discrimination against Latinos who are HIV-positive as a serious problem in the workplace.

“When they’re fired from their job, they frequently lose their healthcare with it,” Viramontes said.

The 35-year-old Peña found out he was HIV-positive in April 2011 and wrestled with the decision over whether to tell his superiors, he said in an interview. He eventually told one manager in June 2011 because he felt they should know in case side effects from his medicine caused him to need time off work. He said he was hoping for support.

“It was a very personal decision that I thought about before I did it,” Peña said of telling the supervisor, who isn’t named in the suit. “I was looking more for guidance and support, and that’s why I did it.”

Peña claims that he received emails pertaining to issues affecting the performance of the Burger King restaurants that he managed only after revealed his status to his supervisor. Prior to speaking to his manger, he claims that he had a stellar work record.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits this kind of discrimination. It defines disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity.” HIV falls under that standard and Victor Viramontes, Pena’s attorney and senior counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund  is determined to make Burger King an example of the challenges that HIV positive individuals face in the work place.

“The fact pattern is very troubling, particularly against a large corporate entity like Burger King,” he said. “We wanted to step in and send a message to employers that this is inappropriate.”

Read more at the Huffington Post.

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Mohammed Lukema, the headmaster of Kibaha Primary School in the country’s largest city Dar es Salaam, claimed that some parents requested that infected students wear the red ribbons so that school officials know who aren’t able to do certain tasks such as sweeping or carrying water that may affect their health.

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Lukema told the BBC:

“Our school has pupils who are suffering from various diseases. The school and the society at large have decided to label pupils’ uniforms…In our school we put a red label on the pupils’ collars to identify them.”

However, activists warned that revealing someone’s HIV status without their consent is illegal and carries stiff jail sentences of up to three years for those found guilty of “outing” a person’s condition.

Since about 5% of the population, or about 1.4m people, in the East African nation are living with HIV, such stigmatization could have untold effects on those infected. There are about 200,000 under the age of 15 who are living with HIV/AIDS.

There are at least seven schools in Dar es Salaam that have implemented the labeling system.

Rebecca Mshumbusi, chairperson of the Kibaha Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS, is angered by the unethical practice. She told the BBC:

“The information of one’s sickness is confidential unless if one decides to share it with others. There are laws that can punish those revealing other’s health status.”

Jane Tibihita, a co-ordinator of Upendo Partnership, a local campaign group added that there have been few initiatives to educate people about the consequences of stigmatizing those with HIV.

“They are only dealing with infection and prevention of the disease. Now, the HIV and Aids Prevention and Control Act allows one with concrete evidence to be taken to court on the grounds of stigmatization and one can be sentenced for up to three years.”

The country’s health minister has said that he won’t comment until an investigation has been completed.

Still, one only has to look back at history to see other examples of similar labeling efforts. In Nazi concentration camps, there was a well-documented system of badges that prisoners were forced to wear. Those who were branded as homosexual had to wear an inverted pink triangle while Jewish students were forced to don a yellow star of David.

Tanzania school officials may be operating on a slippery slope of discrimination.

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In a near unanimous vote of 9-1, the City Council approved the measure at a meeting today, according to a report in the LA Weekly.

The ruling, which the City Council approved 11-1 in a preliminary vote last week, only applies to porn scenes shot on-location and exempts adult films shot at studios. Still, the majority of porn films made in Los Angeles are shot on-location.

The ordinance now just needs the mayor’s signature.

The ordinance has it’s fair share of advocates who say the measure is needed to prevent the spread of HIV in the multibillion-dollar adult film industry, much of which is centered in Los Angeles, according to the New York Daily News.

But there are other groups such as the porn industry’s trade association, the Free Speech Coalition, who’ve opposed the city mandating the use of condoms. The group argues that regular testing of actors for sexually transmitted diseases has worked, claiming that there have been no confirmed cases of HIV in the porn industry in five years.

However, the adult industry shut down last August after reports surfaced that a unnamed adult performer tested positive HIV.

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“And I know the government administered AIDS/ So I guess we just pray like the minister say.”

Kanye’s not the only black person who believes the Feds are behind this devastating disease.

The Rand Corporation reported in a study that, of the 500 black participants they surveyed on whether AIDS was man-made, half answered yes.

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Back in 1995, Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, Minister of Health for Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, called for a congressional investigation on the subject.

“We know from the Congressional Record that money was appropriated for the creation of artificial biological agents to defeat the human immune system. This took place in July of 1969. Ten million dollars was allocated to the U.S. Army. So… let there be hearings to uncover the files,” CNN quoted Dr. Muhammad.

Here is a rundown of a few theories that have kept the AIDS conspiracy merry-go-round spinning:

1) God Is Punishing You

The late Jerry Falwell not only felt that gays and lesbians were responsible for 9/11, he argued that AIDS was God’s punishment for them as well. “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals,” Fallwell said, “it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”

2) Laboratory Accident

British journalist Edward Hooper claimed in his book, The River, that Dr. Hilary Koprowski of the Wistar Research Institute unintentionally created AIDS by using chimp kidneys to produce an oral polio vaccine, according to a 2008 Slate article.

3) The Government Is Trying To Kill Black People

A more recent claim that AIDS was government-sponsored came from the pulpit of President Barack Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. During a sermon, Wright blasted the U.S. government for “inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”

4) What Virus?

In 1996, University of California-Berkeley professor Peter Duesberg claimed that AIDS is connected to recreational drug use and that HIV is harmless.

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki believed him. Mbeki made international headlines ten years ago questioning whether HIV causes AIDS along with a number of other controversial remarks.

Does Any Of This Matter?

Whether or not the government manufactured AIDS, the illness is ravaging the black community in the most devastating fashion.

Blacks make up only 12% of the U.S. population, but account for 44 percent of new HIV infections, according to a recent study by The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The study also reports that black women account for 57 percent of new HIV infections and that their incident rate is 15 times more than that of white women. Black teens between the ages of 13-19 account for 68 percent of new AIDS cases despite only making up 17 percent of the teen population.

Given these devastating numbers, are conspiracy theories even relevant? Do you feel conspiracy theories harm efforts to fight HIV-AIDS in the black community?

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Hamilton County jurors returned the verdict Wednesday on 14 felonious assault counts against Andre Davis, who wrestled using stage names including Gangsta of Love and Sweet Sexy Sensation.

Prosecutors say the 29-year-old Davis didn’t tell a dozen sex partners about his HIV status or lied to them.

The women testified they had unprotected sex with Davis. The judge prohibited attorneys from bringing up whether any of the women was infected.

Defense attorneys challenged whether it was proved Davis was HIV-positive and suggested the women were promiscuous.

World Wrestling Entertainment told Davis in 2009 it wouldn’t hire him because he failed a physical by testing positive for HIV.

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Germany — Doctors in Germany have claimed that they have cured a man with HIV through a stem cell transplant. Aidsmap reports:

Doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.

The man received bone marrow from a donor who had natural resistance to HIV infection; this was due to a genetic profile which led to the CCR5 co-receptor being absent from his cells. The most common variety of HIV uses CCR5 as its ‘docking station’, attaching to it in order to enter and infect CD4 cells, and people with this mutation are almost completely protected against infection.

Read The Whole Story

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In a series of sermons delivered at Luhlaza High School in Khayelitsha township, Cape Town, Pastor Xola Skosana declared that Jesus Christ had “put himself in the shoes of people who experience brokenness” and had channeled the suffering of his followers by experiencing their same sickness, pain and marginalization, reports the BBC.

Local’s dismay at the content of the sermons quickly spread to the national arena following the events in Cape Town, forcing Pastor Skosana to explain his approach.

“The best gift we can give to people who are HIV-positive is to help de-stigmatize AIDS and create an environment where they know God is not against them, he’s not ashamed of them,” he said.

But while some groups praise the pastor’s metaphor as a means of reaching out to the infected and enhancing the debate about HIV prevention in South Africa, others are outraged over the connection he has made between Jesus and the precarious situations in which the virus can be contracted.

Fellow religious leaders have noted that the metaphor jeopardizes believers’ understanding of Jesus as supreme and God, ultimately rendering him part of the problem and not the solution.

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South Africa has been at the forefront of international attention in recent months with its audacious discussions and approaches to HIV prevention.

Home to the largest population of people living with the virus, in June this year the country played host to a conference focusing on the link between male circumcision and a significant reduction in the spread of HIV.

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Representatives from Johns Hopkins University and US government delegates were reported to be in attendance at the event, in which researchers, South African authorities and medical experts expressed the possibility of circumcision being able to reduce the spread of HIV by 60 per cent.

Around the same time in KwaZulu-Natal province, 800 boys and young men had been circumcised by authorized medical teams in that provincial government’s push to circumcise 186,703 boys and young men in 2010/2011.

South Africa as a whole is expected to circumcise 2 million boys in the next 5 years.

You can read more about Pastor Xola Skosana’s sermons on the BBC website.

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An adult-film performer has tested positive for HIV at a Sherman Oaks clinic frequented by those in the porn industry, according to clinic staff.

“We do have a confirmed adult-industry performer who tested positive for HIV. We are quarantining and testing all exposed partners to the individual who tested positive for HIV,” said Jennifer Miller, HIV/STD counselor at the AIM clinic in Sherman Oaks, where the person was tested.

Miller would not say the gender of the person, what companies he or she worked for, when the person was tested or whether AIM had notified state and county health officials.

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The 2010 FIFA World Cup may have placed South Africa in the international headlines for all the right reasons, but a series of domestic events have the African nation at the forefront of a debate that goes well beyond the football field.

At the same time BBC News revealed June 18 that twenty boys in South Africa’s East Cape Province had died of complications related to male circumcision, another 800 were circumcised in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal.

In East Cape, 9 boys had died in the 24 hours before June 18 and another 11 in the twelve days prior.

Of the 60 boys that were rescued from illegal initiation camps, all were reported to be suffering from dehydration and septic wounds, and 4 faced the likelihood of having their genitals completely removed.

Reports suggest the incident involved tribal initiation practices where those performing the circumcisions were not authorized or trained in accord with South African law.

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In neighboring KwaZulu-Natal province, premier Zweli Mkhize told reporters his government was satisfied with the approach taken to reduce HIV infections and was pursuing a target of 47,055 newborn and 186,703 boys’ circumcisions throughout 2010/2011.

“So far 800 males have been circumcised as of the end of April,” said Mkhize. “We are very happy with the programme.”

The province has played host to a male circumcision conference in recent days where representatives from John Hopkins University were reported to be in attendance.

The event, held around the same time as the mass circumcision, focused on the link between HIV prevention and circumcision.

Past studies suggest that the contraction of HIV between males and females can be reduced by 60 per cent through the partial removal of the penis’ foreskin.

Opponents of male circumcision in the United States argue that the practice robs a child of particular penile functions like the protection against dryness, chafing and abrasions that can allow for the entry of STDs and other bacteria.

While criticisms of the practice have been prevalent for decades in the United States, the country continues to be the world’s largest practitioner of male circumcisions.

In the 20th century over 120 million American boys went under the knife to receive what is now regarded as a ‘cultural surgery.’

Yet since the 1970s the American Academy of Pediatrics has upheld the claim that the amount of circumcision-related complications is unknown.

Male circumcision opponent NOHARMM estimates that the rate of complications range between 2 and 10 per cent of all circumcisions performed in the US.

Author and doctor, Robert Baker M.D, said in 1979 that, “Circumcision, the most widely performed surgery on males in this country, has the least scientific justification of any surgical procedure.”

NOHARMM claims the surgical procedure has continued since then at a rate of around 60 per cent of all male births.

Domestic criticisms aside, the issue remains that Africans continue to suffer the consequences of rampant HIV.

South Africa is home to world’s largest population of people living with the virus.

The country is expected to circumcise 2 million boys in the next 5 years.

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