The Internet's role in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases is still a relatively small worry for health officials, Dr. Ronald Valdiserri, deputy director of the AIDS division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. ''We recognize that at least for some gay men, this is a very common way in which they hook up with other partners,'' said Dr. In a study in San Francisco, which has not yet been published, one-third of the gay men surveyed by public health officials reported having met sexual partners on the Internet in the last year, compared with 13 percent of heterosexual men and 6 percent of women. Klausner said, ''so this new venue which facilitates disease transmission places new demands on an already overstretched prevention system.'' ''Disease-prevention agencies are chronically understaffed and underfunded,'' Dr.
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America Online refused to divulge the men's names to health officials, so PlanetOut, a Web site for homosexuals, was dispatched to advise chat room members to seek disease testing. Some of the men with the disease said they knew their partners only by their online nicknames. In August 1999, San Francisco officials traced a cluster of six syphilis cases back to the AOL chat room. The efficiency of such a system worries health officials because it allows diseases to spread outside small groups of partners. Jeffrey Klausner, director of the sexually transmitted disease unit at the city's public health department. Suitors exchange telephone numbers or addresses, then often meet for sexual encounters in which the participants know little more than their partners' online nicknames, said Dr. In chat rooms like one on America Online for gay San Francisco men, homosexuals can scan the profiles of potential dates and carefully choose partners by age, race or sexual interests. In San Francisco, where city health officials estimate that 15 percent to 20 percent of the adult men are gay, the Internet has become a likely place to find willing sex partners. ''We just want to make sure you have the information to make informed choices.'' ''We're not the sex police,'' reads his America Online profile, which any chat room participant can pull up. Miranda writes back in graphic prose rarely heard from most disease-prevention counselors. Many express surprise that Stop AIDS is online, then pepper him with sexually explicit questions about what constitutes risky behavior. Miranda has answered dozens of queries from chat room participants in the last month. He works on an old Macintosh Quadra 610 in the Stop AIDS office, which is between a pet groomer and an exotic leather shop in the mostly gay Castro neighborhood. While online, Marcel Miranda, the deputy director of outreach and organizing, chats under the moniker StopAIDSMM.
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''If we're working where people are meeting to have sex,'' said Steven Gibson, program director for Stop AIDS, ''we have to find ways to work on the Internet.''
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Health officials say gay men online and in general are not disclosing their H.I.V. Recent studies have concluded that gay men are more likely to use the Internet to find a sexual partner than lesbians and heterosexuals and that people who use the Internet to arrange sexual encounters are more at risk for sexually transmitted diseases (S.T.D.'s). The agency will train four disease-prevention counselors to roam through chat rooms popular with gay and bisexual men and answer questions about safe sex. The San Francisco Department of Public Health last month gave Stop AIDS a $130,000 grant to expand its presence into chat rooms.
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in San Francisco since 1984, is expanding its outreach from the usual venues to include increasingly popular places for arranging sexual encounters: Internet chat rooms. Health officials hope that their message sticks in the mind of a patron as he leaves with a willing partner.īut what to do when the meeting place is virtual, yet the sex that follows is just as real? The Stop AIDS Project, a nonprofit agency that has fought the spread of H.I.V.
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In San Francisco, the bars in predominantly gay neighborhoods teem with safe-sex posters, baskets of free condoms and fliers for counseling services. WHERE men meet men for sex, health agencies are sure to follow.