Tetsuro OKUBO
ICU Undergraduate Student
【The article below is the same as the article that appears in the fourteenth issue of the CGS Newsletter.】
On February 10th, 2011, a seminar called, "Thoughts on HIV/AIDS: Resistance against the Otherization of the Disease" was co-hosted by CGS as part of the Area Studies in Ethnology course at ICU. Akitomo Shingae of Nagoya City University spoke about the issue from the perspective of anthropology and immunology, and Keisuke Sakurai of PLACE Tokyo/JaNP+ related his own experience both as an advocate and as an HIV-positive person himself. From their separate viewpoints, these speakers discussed the image and reality of HIV/AIDS in Japan.
Dr. Shingae's lecture focused on the efforts of the gay community in coming up with strategies to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. One idea put forward was the possibility of replacing the traditional top-down approach of the "community of practice," in which information is disseminated to encourage prevention by community leaders, with a "biosocial community," in which each member is proactive about exchanging information. However, I wonder just how much potential lies within a so-called community. As Dr. Shingae said, with the development of information technology, homosexuals have started meeting up through the Internet instead of through such "face-to-face" communities as gay bars. With regard to HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness for MSMs, I feel there is still a need to explore newer methods.
Mr. Sakurai spoke so humorously about seemingly serious topics like discrimination and disease that I couldn't help but laugh. However, at the same time he made me think. What really struck me was his statement that, "People find it hard to understand that sleep apnea is actually a more serious problem for me than HIV." Until I heard Mr. Sakurai's talk, I also thought HIV was naturally a more serious disease, because at present it is impossible to cure completely. However, HIV infection can be controlled, whereas a serious case of sleep apnea that is left untreated has only a sixty-percent survival rate after eight years. I was reminded that even though the views of medicine and science may seem neutral and absolute, they are in fact inextricably tied to bias and the cultural context.
At this seminar, the HIV/AIDS issue was mostly discussed in the context of MSMs. In fact, many people believe that the issue is restricted to the gay community. Certainly, out of a total of 12,623 HIV infections in Japan, 6,658 cases resulted from homosexual contact in comparison to 3,838 cases from heterosexual contact. If you consider the population ratio of both parties, the infection rate of heterosexuals may seem far lower than that of homosexuals/MSMs. However, there were 5,783 AIDS cases altogether of which only 1,923 resulted from homosexual contact in comparison to 2,259 from heterosexual contact. Even if you are infected with HIV, if the disease is detected in its early stages and properly treated, you can prevent the onset of AIDS. One major reason for the higher proportion of heterosexual AIDS cases could be the fact that heterosexuals are relatively less proactive about getting tested for HIV and only discoverg they are infected after the onset of AIDS. If you believe that HIV/AIDS is just a problem for the gay community, is the thought, "it doesn't concern people like me," lurking somewhere in the back of your mind?