ATLANTA (Reuters) - A growing number of gay and bisexual men in the United States are engaging in risky sex with partners they meet on the Internet, raising fears that the AIDS virus could be poised for a major comeback in the group hardest hit by the epidemic.
Online chatrooms and Web sites are replacing gay bathhouses and sex clubs as the most popular meeting point to arrange high-risk sex, according to two new studies presented on Tuesday at the 2003 National HIV Prevention Conference.
The findings come amid growing evidence of an apparent resurgence of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, as well as syphilis in men who have sex with men. The presence of sexually transmitted diseases is known to facilitate the spread of HIV.
New HIV diagnoses among gay and bisexual men have jumped more than 17 percent since 1999, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week. Some 850,000 to 950,000 Americans have the AIDS virus and approximately 16,000 die from the disease each year.
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http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=3179188This seems like a bit of a stretch to me, folks. Smart enough to use the internet, but not smart enough to know about HIV and safer sex?