For those of you unfamiliar with the term ‘bug-chasing'< i> like ‘barebacking’ before, it derives from the States and has been given to suggest there are ‘huge’ numbers of homosexual active men who are HIV negative ‘seeking’ to become HIV positive. According to US magazine Rolling Stones the ‘bug chasers’ are responsible for up to a quarter of all new annual HIV cases in the States.

Oh Lord - Shock horror!!!

You can hear the cries of those to the right, ‘those bloody homos give them rights and what happens they go around deliberately infective people’. 

Rubbish.

Let’s put this into some sort of perspective. Firstly HIV positive people have sex like anyone else, oh yes and some might have sex without a condom, like anyone else. 

Let’s say for example a gay man who is HIV negative - let’s face it in the UK 1/3 of gay men don’t even know their HIV status- they don’t know if they are HIV positive (HIV+) or HIV negative (HIV-) decides that he so wants to become HIV+ that he deliberately goes out of his way to become infected. He decides to play Russian Roulette by actively seeking a positive man to have unprotected sex or ‘bareback’ with.

Most positive gay men are well aware of the risks associated with unprotected sex to themselves, furthermore the majority who do have sex without the use of condom do so with other positive men. Back to our HIV- man eager to become infected, hope you’re still with me?

He decides that he wants to become infected and therefore seeks a partner who is HIV+, after all he won’t get HIV from someone who is not infected. By advertising this fact mainly on the internet he hopes that he will get a response from a positive man who is prepared to give him HIV. The more HIV+ men the greater the chance of becoming infected – he hopes. Does the positive guy care about the negative guys situation? Is the negative guy negative or could he be positive? There are loads of permutations to the situation. The fact is that the vast majority of gay men who have anal sex do so using a condom. Some decide not to use condoms during sex usually when the HIV status is known to both individuals and where the sex they have is negotiated.

The alarmist reaction to the few individuals who ‘bug chase’ is just that alarmist. There are many gay men who never use condoms during sex however the majority do cutting down the risk of getting or passing on HIV and other ‘bugs’ in the process.

For further information on sex and sexually transmitted infections visit the THT website www.tht.org.uk