Motivations are murky for people trying to spread AIDS … and murkier for those trying to catch it

By Meg Laughlin, Times staff writer
In Print: Sunday, May 22, 2011

TAMPA — Three years ago, 19-year-old D.W. Swain came down with a severe cough and high fever he couldn’t shake.

It didn’t occur to him, he said, that he could be HIV positive because his sex life had been limited to a man who swore his love and that he was HIV negative.

But when Swain heard from friends that his former boyfriend was “spreading the ninja” — infecting people — he got tested.

The test came back positive, and Swain discovered that he already had full-blown AIDS. His immune system ravaged, he rapidly developed pneumonia, then nearly fatal kidney and liver failure.

He was shocked to find that a man he loved had knowingly spread a fatal illness.

Just as shocking to Swain was hearing about a few local men actually trying to get the virus that can lead to AIDS.

In gay chat rooms, he had heard of the shadowy world of “gift givers” — those who knowingly spread the incurable virus — and “bug chasers” — those who seek it out. The sardonic nicknames describe people who refuse to believe the virus is deadly, or who know it is and don’t care who is harmed. Swain had trouble believing such a phenomenon had touched his own community, much less his own life.

More than 100,000 Floridians have HIV. Relatively few — perhaps up to 100 in the Tampa Bay area — are thought to be bug chasers or gift givers. Theories on their motivations vary. Some infectors are thought to be showing their power, or maybe even wreaking vengeance. Virus seekers might think mistakenly that HIV will make them eligible for more public benefits, or that they’re proving their love to an HIV-positive partner.

Whatever drives them, their impact, both on people like Swain and on the effort to combat the epidemic, has health officials deeply concerned.

Doctors, nurses, counselors and AIDS educators are bound by medical confidentiality laws not to report to law enforcement the names of those they suspect of intentionally spreading the virus. And even when a person who did not want the virus steps forward to accuse his “gift-giver,” prosecutors have a tough time proving the charges in court.

So health workers watch and cringe, as more people are infected. Some, like Swain, naively trust their partners rather than practice safe sex.

“I can’t believe how stupid I was. I learned the hard way that each of us has to be responsible for our own protection,” said Swain, who keeps his condition under control with a daily regimen of powerful drugs.

Now 22 and a college student, the Tampa native works as an AIDS educator, urging others to protect themselves, no matter how convincing a partner’s promises.

Anecdotal evidence

Plenty of people share Swain’s initial skepticism about local bug chasers and gift givers.

Dr. John Sinnott, director of infectious disease at the University of South Florida and Tampa General Hospital, met with a reporter in his office recently to talk about the issue.

“Urban myth, I suspect,” he said. But he picked up the phone to ask a colleague who works more closely with AIDS testing and programs.

Dr. Todd Wills, associate professor of infectious diseases at USF, came on the line.

“They’re out there,” Wills said. “We can’t say what the numbers are because the evidence is not data driven, but anecdotal.”

Sinnott: “How many in this area — 100?”

Wills: “That’s high. But possible.”

Sinnott: “Really? I had no idea.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Department at the National Institutes of Health, said he is “not surprised” to hear of the phenomena because he gets similar reports from all over the country.

He said he is baffled by people’s cavalier behavior because HIV can still cause deadly AIDS even though drugs have been developed to keep it in check. Patients might have a viral strain that develops resistance. The powerful antiretroviral medications are toxic and can damage the kidneys and liver, or may conflict with drugs needed for other conditions. Patients often suffer from depression, drowsiness, nightmares and odd redistribution of weight. Opportunistic infections, such as pneumonia, and of course death, are real possibilities.

“I have never talked to anyone who became HIV-positive — regardless of how it happened — who didn’t say they would rather not be infected after it happened,” said Fauci.

In 2009, 1,232 people died of AIDS in Florida.

‘Positive brotherhood’

Most AIDS educators and health care workers don’t like to talk about bug-chasing and gift-giving. They fear these few people only add to the stigma that the HIV community already experiences and could even cause more cuts to already dwindling public services.

But the behaviors have been documented in medical literature and popular media.

In 2003 on CNN, documentary film maker Louise Hogarth talked about her film The Gift, which featured bug chasers. She called them a “fringe group” with “misperceptions about what it means to get infected.”

The film was followed by a controversial article in Rolling Stone magazine about bug chasers and gift givers in San Francisco. The story led to Internet debates and a 2004 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workshop.

At that workshop, a presenter said he had heard getting infected described as “the gift of the positive brotherhood.”

In 2006, a BBC documentary called I Love Being HIV+ chronicled the filmmaker’s experience of going on a gay dating website, announcing he was HIV positive, and receiving dozens of requests from men wanting unprotected sex so they could get the virus.

The Times asked local AIDS workers to put the newspaper in contact with people trying to contract the virus, but none would speak for the record.

No bonanza

Johnnie Hurst is director of Brothers Making a Difference, an AIDS testing and education center in Tampa. He met D.W. Swain when the young man sought counseling after his diagnosis.

Around the same time, Hurst noticed that the man Swain had identified as his former lover began coming in about once a month, each time bringing in a different young man to be tested.

When a drop of their blood in a vial of chemicals formed the dark line showing them to be HIV positive, most doubled over sobbing, said Hurst. Meanwhile, the man Hurst now calls “the notorious gift giver” feigned surprise and hugged them, smiling behind their backs.

“He seems to get off on their vulnerability,” said Hurst.

Hurst said he has seen this scenario unfold at least 10 times.

He said he also sees young men, who get positive test results, pump their fists triumphantly while yelling “yes” or “finally.”

People who actually seek out the virus aren’t taking its consequences seriously, said Andrew Maldonado, AIDS officer for the Hillsborough health department.

“They think all they have to do is take a pill and the benefits outweigh the downside,” he said. Some think getting the virus proves their love to their HIV-positive partner, and gives them a sense of belonging to a community, even one defined by a deadly disease.

More common, he said, are those who seek the virus because they believe a bonanza of services, from free housing and food to a visiting nurse, awaits them.

“They’ll say things like ‘Okay, time to get the services rolling,’ ” Maldonado said.

But services, which were never abundant, have since dried up, or require lengthy waits to obtain, he said.

“What we are trying to do is educate bug chasers about the truth — that they are wrong on all counts,” said Maldonado.

Legal hurdles

A United Nations policy brief in 2008 said purposeful HIV infections are rare, but that “the resulting harm justifies punishment.”

Governments around the world have enacted laws against intentional HIV infection.

Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office records show that from 1996 to 2010, charges were brought 91 times against suspects for “criminal transmission of human immunodeficiency virus infection.” Of those, more than 30 resulted in convictions.

Local prosecutors say it’s difficult to stop a gift giver because they usually can’t prove who had sex with whom and who infected whom.

The first big hurdle, said Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe, is finding out who the infectors are, then proving they knew they were HIV positive and failed to tell their sexual partners.

The next hurdle is proving the target was infected by the gift giver, not someone else, and then proving the victim didn’t know the infector was HIV positive.

McCabe could recall only one case in Pinellas that was successfully prosecuted in the past decade.

“It’s not an attractive situation for a prosecutor,” he said.

Biology adds to the legal problems. “The virus mutates after infection, which makes it very unlikely that it could be tracked from one person to another,” said National Institutes of Health spokeswoman Melanie Padmanabhan.

But Polk County Assistant State Attorney Chip Thulberry said convictions were not impossible. A few years ago, his office convicted a man for criminally spreading HIV.

“The prosecution has to start with a victim coming forward and complaining,” he said. “That’s the first step.”

A video plea

After he was well enough to get out of bed, Swain made a YouTube video addressed to the man who he says infected him.

He begins by saying he forgives his former lover. His smooth young face overcome with sadness, Swain looks away, then stares back at the camera. He mentions another friend who, he says, fell prey to the infector.

Swain laments his own dashed dream of military service. He tells his infector: “You repulse me.”

Then, his face softening, he concludes: “Be up front with people. Realize what you’re doing to people before it’s too late.”

After the video appeared online, Swain said his infector called and threatened to sue him if he divulged his name.

Even though he was not a health worker when he was infected, Swain maintains his current employment means he can’t divulge his infector’s name.

“But if subpoenaed, I would,” he said.

As an AIDS educator at Youth Educational Services in Tampa, Swain said he has met five more young men in the past year-and-a-half who say they were infected by his former lover. They also say the infector claimed to be HIV negative.

“We hear he’s having unprotected sex with women now,” said Hurst.

Last month, a young man came into the clinic where Swain works. He knew Swain’s HIV status, and asked him to have unprotected sex.

“A bug chaser,” said Swain. “I can’t sleep at night just thinking about it.”

Times researchers Caryn Baird and Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.

Still Weeping (Tivoli, A Year After)

You would think the pain would subside
But my wounds are still wide
Although there’s no evidence of this from the outside
I’m slowly dying from the inside
You would think I have forgotten that day
Although I’ve tried my mind keeps pressing replay
The shots keep echoing, cries, mayhem, disarray
Emotions running, people still dying, state of anarchy
My bed is friendly
But my nights are scary
Sleep keeps calling
But my eyes are saying don’t close me
Trauma so hard to sidestep
Like being in a thousand accidents, coma
Can’t recuperate as yet
You would think that by this time I wouldn’t be this bitter
You would think that by this time I would’ve closed that chapter
You would think that by now our lives would’ve been much greater
You would think that by now the healing process would’ve been over
No, it haven’t been that easy
Not when we’re still govern by the same agents of cruelty
Not when citizens are still being treated unfairly
Not when the faces of friends and families killed, flashes at me daily
Not when a year have passed and there’s still no justice for their brutality
Dada…. Hall A Fame

Rapture: Harold Camping issues new apocalypse date

The evangelical broadcaster who left followers crestfallen by his failed prediction that last Saturday would be Judgement Day says he miscalculated.EMP v.3.0.0.r426652_426614_1

Harold Camping said it had “dawned” on him that God would spare humanity “hell on Earth for five months” and the apocalypse would happen on 21 October.

Mr Camping said he felt “terrible” about his mistake.

But he said he could not give financial advice to those who spent their life savings in the belief the end was nigh.

Mr Camping had predicted that on 21 May, true believers would be swept up to heaven while a giant earthquake would bring destruction for those left behind.

His independent ministry, Family Radio International, spent millions of dollars on broadcasts, billboards and campaign vehicles to publicise the prediction.

Some followers donated their life savings or simply gave away their worldly possessions as the day approached.

The predicted doomsday was publicised worldwide

Many expressed bewilderment and shock as the day came and went with no sign of the global cataclysm.

“I’ve been mocked and scoffed and cursed at,” said Jeff Hopkins, a retired TV producer in New York state who spent some of his savings customising his car to showcase Mr Camping’s warning.

“It’s like getting slapped in the face.”

‘Not accurate’Mr Camping had not been seen since Saturday until he appeared on a show on his Open Forum radio show, broadcast from Oakland, California, on Monday to give a 90-minute sometimes rambling presentation that included a question-and-answer session with reporters.

He said that when his prediction had failed to materialise he felt so terrible that he took refuge in a motel with his wife.

He said sorry for not having the dates “worked out as accurately as I could have”.

Over the weekend, he said, he had returned to the scripture and it had “dawned” on him that a “merciful and compassionate God” would spare humanity by compressing the apocalyptic destruction into a shorter time frame.

But he insisted 21 October had always been the end-point of his own chronology – or at least his own latest chronology, as a previous prophecy that the apocalypse would strike in 1994 also failed to come to pass.

Asked if he had any advice to offer those who had given away their material wealth in the belief the world was about to end, Mr Camping said they would cope.

“We just had a great recession. There’s lots of people who lost their jobs, lots of people who lost their houses… and somehow they all survived,” he said.

“We’re not in the business of giving any financial advice,” he added.

“We’re in the business of telling people maybe there is someone you can talk to, and that’s God.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn breaks silence to IMF staff, says he’s not guilty of sexually assaulting maid

Jamaican government minister and Member of Parliament James Robertson has released a statement about the cancellation of his and his wife’s United States of America visas.

See the statement he released below. yes

Psalm 21

For the director of music. A psalm of David.
1 The king rejoices in your strength, LORD.
How great is his joy in the victories you give!

2 You have granted him his heart’s desire
and have not withheld the request of his lips.[b]
3 You came to greet him with rich blessings
and placed a crown of pure gold on his head.
4 He asked you for life, and you gave it to him—
length of days, for ever and ever.
5 Through the victories you gave, his glory is great;
you have bestowed on him splendor and majesty.
6 Surely you have granted him unending blessings
and made him glad with the joy of your presence.
7 For the king trusts in the LORD;
through the unfailing love of the Most High
he will not be shaken.

8 Your hand will lay hold on all your enemies;
your right hand will seize your foes.
9 When you appear for battle,
you will burn them up as in a blazing furnace.
The LORD will swallow them up in his wrath,
and his fire will consume them.
10 You will destroy their descendants from the earth,
their posterity from mankind.
11 Though they plot evil against you
and devise wicked schemes, they cannot succeed.
12 You will make them turn their backs
when you aim at them with drawn bow.

13 Be exalted in your strength, LORD;
we will sing and praise your might.