Rob writes: once you go paki you never go backi.
Links Between Prison and AIDS Affecting Blacks Inside and Out
RALEIGH, N.C. - Fiddling with a cigarette, Louise, a straight-talking 23-year-old who has been living with H.I.V. for four years, grimaced as she discussed life in the black neighborhood of her small town, a sleepy outpost east of the state capital.
The only jobs, she said, were generally at fast-food places, farms or factories. Entertainment consisted of hanging out on the street corner or at the strip mall. And as for men, she said, with an air of resignation, "They've either been in prison, they're married or they're gay."
It never seemed unusual, said Louise, who asked that her last name be withheld because some people close to her are unaware of her H.I.V. status, that nearly all the men she had been involved with - including the one who passed the virus on to her - had been in prison.
"In a grocery store you have a big selection of meat laid out in front
of you, and you can chose which grade you want," she said. But in her town, she added, "you don't have that choice. There is no way to really decide the good from the bad. It's all what you decide you can deal with."
Patients With H.I.V. Seen as Separated by a Racial Divide
Last January in Manhattan, at the memorial service of a colleague who died of an AIDS-related illness, Joseph Bostic lost feeling in his legs and had trouble standing. A friend, Keith Cylar, hailed a cab, crumpled some bills into the driver's palm and sent Mr. Bostic home to Brooklyn.
Two months later, Mr. Bostic died of heart and kidney failure related to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Within three weeks, Mr. Cylar, too, was dead of heart disease related to the virus.
The loss of these two men - both of them AIDS activists who had lived with H.I.V. for years - shocked many who had nearly forgotten the days when attending funerals and memorial services was a constant, unsettling ritual.
In the United States, death rates from H.I.V./AIDS have sharply dropped
in the past eight years as new medications have made the disease manageable
for many patients. But among African-Americans like Mr. Bostic and Mr. Cylar, AIDS is still a killer.
In 2002, almost twice as many blacks with AIDS died compared with whites,
a gap that has been increasing since 1998. Researchers say the reasons include late diagnoses and inferior care, along with complications because blacks are more likely than whites to suffer from other illnesses.
