This is Eric. I agree no one should be cast aside, and I also agree we shouldn't create "classes" of HIV+ depending on how they contracted the disease. One thing I need to point out: unfortunately, there are some people who deliberately seek to become infected with HIV. See the documentary "The Gift" and wikipedia article "Bugchasing and giftgiving" for details.

Hi, First of all let me say that I am sorry for the lost of your aunt. It's always hard to loose a loved one. However, I am a little disturbed by your comment "something wrong to get HIV". No one ever does anything intentionally to get HIV and I really thought that we as a society had gotten past the premises that this is a gay disease. So in closing NO ONE should be cast aside. Not your aunt or anyone else. Bless you

If a HIV+ person's blod comes in contact with an open wound of yours, only then can you contact HIV. Not if you eat it, or if it stays outside the body for long.

yes

Yes, if you are HIV+, you should be able to get free medical care under the Ryan White Care Act. Note that it hasn't been fully funded so there are waiting lists for treatment in some areas, unfortunately.

See our video "What's the Risk That I Have Contracted HIV?" As that video notes, in the end, you really can't precisely estimate the percentage risk that a particular individual has contracted HIV. Just get tested, use protection if you're sexually active until a doctor gives you the "all clear from that possible exposure," and don't worry too much in the meantime. Also, I'm unaware of any studies that quantify risk at the "per seconds of encounter" level.

Thank you for that info and I did watch your videos. However, I am wondering how those percentages apply to my situation? Do those percentages mean prolonged exposure with the infected parter? My main question would be that considering the exposure I had, which was 10 seconds at best, what would you say the chances are that I caught anything from her giving me oral sex for that short a time period?

my aunt had a blood transfusion in the 80s, and she died 5 years ago, with three young children left motherless. For everyone that we cast aside for doing something "wrong" to get HIV, we let people like my aunt get sick and die. Oh, and to the denialits, she didn't have a staph infection, never used drugs, was physically fit, and got all of the vitamins and minerals she needed from her abundant back yard garden and local farmers market. and no, she never took ARVs.

The median time in the developed world between contracting HIV and developing clinical AIDS is 10 years without treatment. With monitoring, treatment, and good nutrition, sleep, and general health, you may be able to live a normal lifespan with HIV. So it's not surprising that wealth athletes who contract HIV can still look healthy today. Also, worldwide, the majority of people who contracted HIV did so through heterosexual sex.

See our video "Some Ways You Can Contract HIV and the Risk of Each One" for details about per-encounter risk for various sexual practices including receptive oral sex such as you experienced. Also see wikipedia's article on "HIV" for a table showing transmission risk estimates. Go to the doctor, tell them your history and risk factors, get tested for HIV, and follow their instructions for follow-up testing and anything else. Glad you learned the lessons: avoid paid, casual, and unprotected sex!

I woman I picked up on the street gave me unprotected oral sex for about 10 seconds and I stopped her after that point because I was uncomfortable with the whole experience. I did not ejaculate and there was no other contact between us. Needless to say I learned my lesson but what would you say are the chances she passed anything to me? I am worrying so bad right now that I have trouble sleeping. I was wondering what the chances were of getting that disease through oral sex the way I had it?

Thank you for posting some truth about this epidemic, I was getting sick to my stomach reading HIV is a secret government ploy for population control. Damn some people really need to be educated.

Look up the following on Google: dead_denialists It is a partial list of leading "HIV Denialists" who have since died of disease consistent with advanced AIDs. Furthermore, look up the magazine Continuum, run by HIV-positive denialists, which shut down when its editors all died of AIDS-related causes. Roflol. Get a clue. The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV is clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous, meeting the highest standards of science. Denialists = murderers

Follow-up: it's worth noting that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommended in September 2006 that all patients age 13-64 years be tested for HIV when they visit the doctors office. So although mass screening of elementary school children still would not be cost effective, research has shown that in the U.S., doing an HIV test for every patient at a routine doctor's office visit (a visit they make for other reasons anyway) is in fact cost effective.

This is Eric; I'm not a doctor. I'm aware of no specific connection between mononucleosis and HIV. HIV/AIDS weakens your immune system, so people with HIV/AIDS might be more susceptible to mononucleosis just as they are to other infections, but that would not be an issue specific to mononucleosis.

is it true that mononeucleosis is connected to HIV...?

I guess this is why horror movies dealing with contamination/assimilation are the most scary

This is Eric; I'm not a doctor. Food preparation is not believed to pose a risk of HIV transmission for a variety of reasons including the fact that HIV breaks down quickly outside the body, cooking kills it, etc.

If somebody cooks for you, is there anyway way they* can pass the disease onto you? Maybe if they have a cut on their finger??

Doctor, can you make video for kids?

Nope...not gonna bother to call you a nasty name...you are definitely in a class by yourself, and that's NOT a good thing.

Boring

i wouldn't care if i got HIV AIDS. i know there is a cure 100%. there were 2 sports stars Magic Johnson a former LA Lakers b ball player and he has had HIV since 1992 and a boxer Tommy Morrison who got it in 1995. and they are both alive as healthy as everyone else. they were cured cuase they were straight and had alot of money. the gov has been keeping the cure a secret for years. cuase they don't want to help people. plus it is like 80% of the people who get AIDS are gay. and 20% are straight

This is Eric; I'm not a doctor. It is possible to contract HIV by performing cunnilingus. See our video "Some Ways You Can Contract HIV and the Risk of Each One" for more info. If you use condoms correctly every time you have sex for every sexual act, it greatly reduces your risk of contracting or transmitting HIV but DOES NOT reduce the risk to zero. It's not a guarantee.

This is Eric; I'm not a doctor. I doubt it would be possible to eradicate SIV since you'd have to have a vaccine (we don't, AFAIK) and then vaccinate all the primates who are hosts for it (chimps, sooty mangabeys, etc.) to prevent further spread. HIV in humans could be eradicated if we completely stopped transmission until all people who are HIV+ die of natural causes. But that too would be nearly impossible to pull off right now. What we really need is a safe, effective vaccine for HIV.