The reporters at The Onion discuss the unrealistic views of sex that are promulgated by a sex-positive porn industry and how they affect kids’ views on sex…

A new study in The New England Journal of Medicine says starting HIV meds early reduces your chance of death. People who started their meds when their CD4+ count was in the range 351 to 500 had a death rate of 1.6 deaths per 100 person years while people who started their meds when their CD4+ count was over 500 had a death rate of 1.3 deaths per 100 person years. Since it’s from the New England Journal of Medicine I’ll assume all of their assumptions are reasonable and the research methodology is as good as it gets.

When you read some of the articles that discuss the findings of the study it’s really a balance between drug toxicity over decades and staying alive.

“It must still be recognized that the long-term side effects of the anti-HIV drugs we now use are unknown, and could alter this recommendation after longer patient follow-up,” said Dr. Jeffrey Laurence, a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

That I think is the one possible weakness in the study – they studied people between 1996 and 2005 – so basically a decade’s worth of data. If a kid goes on the drugs at the age of 20 he’s got 60 years of taking drugs if he wants to live to 80. The study states:

Starting therapy at progressively higher CD4+ counts has been shown to lower the risk of some toxic effects associated with antiretroviral therapy, including peripheral neuropathy, anemia, and renal insufficiency. However, all the potential side effects of long-term antiretroviral therapy are unknown.

In other words, no one can tell you they know what the side effects of the drugs will be after taking them for 60 years…

While this study does give some strong evidence, it (combined with the other studies already done) leave some questions unanswered. In the end it’s a personal decision and everyone should do the research and make their own decisions… It’s your body and your life – you’re the only one that’s responsible for it.

In the news is that an Australian researcher has come out and discussed the fact that HIV is becoming less deadly and eventually most likely won’t even be lethal or debilitating. This is something I’ve been saying on here for a while now – HIV, on average, is a lot less lethal than it used to be and the trend will continue. It’s a pretty simple fact that a virus that kills its host quickly will not spread as well as a virus that takes a long time to kill its host (or one doesn’t kill the host at all). The researcher is taking a very long term view with that trend and saying that eventually (if humans survive that long) the virus will be so weak or we’ll have adapted to the virus that it won’t bother us at all…

A new study out of The University of Toronto has concluded that “undesirable” gay guys are more likely to take sexual risks. Their logic goes like this… If you’re not attractive and you know it, you’re more likely to be an alcoholic and be depressed, and you’re more likely to not ask questions when a guy you consider hotter than you wants to bareback.

I’d like to offer a different explanation… That guys who are into their bodies are stuck up and inhibited. How many ads have you seen saying “only hot guys should respond” as if there’s a single accepted definition of “hot guy”, yet you know exactly what the person is talking about. He’s essentially saying “I’m conceited and you need to be up to my standards or I won’t touch you.” Anything that’s messy and real is beyond them – they want plastic and pretty.

I’m not saying all good-looking guys are like that, but the ones who are in the “I’m hot, UB2” crowd are pretty much like that. And being more “plastic” who knows if they’re telling the truth about their sex life. I can completely see them trying to keep up appearances and not being honest.

Then there are “regular Joe’s”, and the bears and the chubs, etc. who have gotten over themselves. They’ve found that you can have incredible sex with the most unlikely people. It’s no wonder that every time I come across a true slut – the type that sucks off or gets fucked by several guys a day and pushes the 1,000 loads/year mark – they’re almost always pretty average in looks. Yet they have way better sex lives than the “pretty boys”. Sure there are exceptions, like Dawson, but the general trend is true.

The other problem with the study is that it lumps racial minorities into the “undesirable” group. The research was done in Toronto and if you know anything about Toronto you know it’s crawling with Asians, yet Asians are generally pretty conservative sexually and always seem to have the lowest incidence of HIV of any racial group. So I don’t get how that didn’t confound the researcher’s conclusions…

I’m sure there’s some truth in what they’re saying, but there’s enough other things going on that the conclusion of the study seems pretty short-sighted…

I’m swamped with work and it’s making me not so horny… Guys want to hookup and I just never seem up for it. I’ll get back in the swing of things in a couple days, but I thought I’d share a study I found through LifeLube (possibly the only pro-condom site I’ll say good things about).

The gist of the study is that repeated exposure to other strains of HIV maintains a strong anti-HIV immune response in the bodies of guys who are already poz. While super-infection is theoretically possible, it’s extremely rare. What’s more normal is for the poz bottom to actually benefit from the poz cum he’s getting in his ass…

We found that individuals, who regularly engaged in unprotected receptive sexual intercourse with an HIV-1 infected viremic partner, displayed higher T cell responses to HIV proteins compared to those who were not regularly exposed to a viremic partner. None of the individuals within this study showed evidence of systemic super-infection. Exposure had limited impact on general activation or poly-functionality. These results are clearly of importance for HIV-1 infected individuals who chose to engage in unprotected sexual activity with other HIV-1 infected individuals. These data also reveal a more general mechanism that occurs in infectious diseases: immune responses to chronic viruses are influenced not only by the virus within the host, but also by exposure to the virus from without.

So from an HIV perspective, poz guys apparently will stay healthier if they take loads up their ass from other poz guys, at least on average. Of course you also have to factor in the negative effect of the other STDs you’re likely to get – it’s not 100% beneficial.

Read the study

I’ve been sitting on this for a while now ’cause I’ve been busy with work and lately ’cause I figured I needed to be giving you guys more sex and less “stuff”… So since you got write-ups on no fewer than three hookups in the past 4 days, I figured it was time for me to take care of this…

A few months ago I told you about a research study about drugs and sex that was being done by CHEST which is part of Hunter College here in NYC. Well, the folks behind that study are starting a new study called “Pillow Talk” where sexually active guys login and record their sexual activity before they go to bed each night. Here’s their full blurb on the study…

The Study is called Pillow Talk. It is for sexually active NYC gay and bisexual men. We are really interested in learning about men’s sexual experiences. There are absolutely no judgments and this is not an intervention (i.e., we are not trying to change any behavior). We just want to hear your story!

Men who join the study will be asked to visit our office in Chelsea, where they will participate in a 1-on-1 confidential interview and a computer-based survey. Something new we have added to the study is a “daily diary.” Men who join the study will complete a brief online-survey about their day. They will keep this “diary” for 30 days.

There are 2 follow up appointments. We ask you to return 1-month and 4-months after joining the study. This is to get an update on you life since the last time we saw you. All told, you can earn up to $220 for full participation.

Call 212-206-7919 x 300 to screen for the study. All calls are completely confidential.

Or email research@chestnyc.org (we can answer questions briefly via email, but will ultimately ask you to call if you want to screen for the study).

This study is being sponsored by Hunter College. We have been doing research with the GLBT community for more than a decade.

You may be asking “why bother”? To me there are two really good reasons. First, the $220 isn’t bad, but more importantly it’s important that researchers understand what’s going on in our lives. Honestly, the safe sex message is failing miserably these days. Personally I don’t think that’s going to change, but I feel like we need to give “thinkers” the information they need to come up with something better than “use a condom every time”. They need to understand the lives of those of us who are sexually active in order to really understand what messages have a possibility of working.

I will always encourage guys to ditch the rubbers, fucked raw, and give and take loads. But at the same time I have no problem helping the safe sex crowd get their act together and get more grounded in reality.

If you contact them, please tell them you heard about the study from rawTOP. If you don’t want to admit to reading this blog you can say your friend “Richard” told you about the study (Richard = Dick => I’m a top… Get it?)

And just for the record – I do plan on signing up for this study. It wasn’t until today when I looked closely at the study objectives and requirements that I realized I was eligible…

UPDATE 1:

So I called a couple of days ago to inquire. They said they had about 10 minutes of questions (it took 13 minutes), and I was approved. Apparently the 30-odd guys I’ve fucked in the last 3 months qualifies me as being a big enough slut for their study… I have an appointment early next week.

I’m not quite sure why the appointment is going to take 3 hours, but that’s how long they say it will be. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with me for 3 hours! No wonder they pay you $225 to be part of the study…

UPDATE 2:

I went in today for the initial interview it took 3 hours like they said it would. They first went over the different sex, alcohol and drug use I had had in the past 90 days (looks like I had sex with over 50 guys thanks to IML and going to the bathhouse in Montreal). Then we had a general discussion of sex, and then there was an hour long computer survey. So pretty straightforward, and they paid $40 for the three hours.

Now for the next 30 days I do a daily online survey (get paid $40 if I complete all 30 days), then there’s a 4(!) hour follow up interview for which I get paid $45, and then another interview something like a month after that (another $40 I think…)

The important part is that the people there really are really non-judgemental. It was a woman (young) who interviewed me. I could tell she’d heard it all before and had no problem with my answers (and I was reall pretty honest and frank with her)… So I can say from personal experience that you won’t have a negative experience if you go…