I’m a little skeptical about The Advocate’s Healthwatch Report, “ Most gay men and lesbians have been tested for HIV .” Frankly, I’m not that impressed with a report that “only about 35% [of gays and lesbians] unaware of their HIV serostatus.” One out of three? You’ve got to be kidding me! I don’t want to jump to conclusions before reading the entire CDC report and Harris Interactive poll, but even if that number is correct for the poll, the sample size was 144 . Pretty poor n if you want me to believe the statistics. (I’m also curious about the question–is it “Have you ever been tested? In the last 3 months? Do you know your status? Are you sure?”)

Both the public health and gay communities have a lot of work to do. Testing needs to be low-cost and anonymous (anyone who knows anything about HIV testing knows that confidential testing is confidential, but still tied to your medical record, and can therefore be used to deny you health insurance), and have more reliability and shorter window of time for error. There’s some level of personal responsibility involved, but I think policy that facilitates and encourages testing is generally more effective and less paternal than mandates or requirements.

The second most alarming statistic: that two-thirds of 18-24 year-olds haven’t been tested. That seems like a prime group for infection, in both heterosexuals and homosexuals. The fastest growing group of HIV positive individuals are young black females.

Update: I found the poll . More worries: the shortest amount of time asked about was tested “12 months or less.” Table 7 is the scariest: 81% of LGBT people didn’t think they were at risk for HIV (nor did 86% of heterosexuals) and many weren’t comfortable asking their health care provider for it. Others didn’t want to get tested, or didn’t know where to get tested.

Update 2: Infections continue to rise .

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