Subjects in this issue:

Annual Drug Guide

Sculptra

PACE

Annual Drug Guide

While attending the U.S. Conference on AIDS in Hollywood, Florida, in September, I stopped by one of the many resource tables and picked up a copy of your Tenth Annual HIV Drug Guide. As a college professor, I found this publication to be very helpful, and would like to use it as a resource in an HIV/AIDS course I teach each spring. I’m writing to you at this time to inquire about the possibility of receiving additional copies of the publication, so that each of my students can have one as a resource guide in our discussions. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Todd M. Sabato, Ph.D., James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA

Sculptra

I was intrigued with the reference to using Sculptra back in 2001, in the editor’s note of November/December. I was diagnosed in l993 and currently enjoy excellent health, but I have deep furrows on either side of my face. One member of the community, who I had just met, came up to me and said, “You are HIV-positive, aren’t you?” This was not said in a supportive sense, but rather, “Ha, ha, I know your secret.” Give him the A-hole of the year award. Keep up the good work—the column and the magazine are excellent.

Name withheld, via the Internet

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PACE

I decided to write after reading the letter written by the coordinator of the PACE (Prisoners for AIDS Counseling and Education) program here in Marcy Correctional Facility (“New York prisons and hepatitis C,” September/October 2006). I’ve been a facilitator in this program, working with William Lopez, for around a year now. It’s been a life changing experience in both good ways and bad. There are harsh realities around HIV awareness in the New York State Department of Corrections.

This is my first time in prison. I’m serving a four-year sentence for burglary. After 10 years of IV drug use and alcoholism, this was the end result, and the “bottom” of my addiction. I met Mr. Lopez while participating in a so-called drug treatment program in the Marcy Facility. He mentioned in his letter the financial “bottom line” in DOCS, which relates to treatment programs as well as HIV education here. Unfortunately, the goal in the prison administration is to make money through state and federal funding. They re not concerned about the futile attempts at, or complete lack of, education and treatment in prison. I am very proud to say that the PACE program here is run by inmates, without any help from the prison administration. It is an excellent educational program, and would be as effective as any program on the outside. For those of us who are involved as facilitators or coordinators, the PACE program is what is most important to us as inmates, surrounded by opportunities to break stigmas and educate each other.

Today I am a 32-year-old HIV-negative Caucasian “preacher kid” with a long history of alcoholism and drug use. Along with the booze and the drugs I managed to have relations with too many young women, too often, and for all the wrong reasons. I am HIV-negative by luck or by miracle. Everyday I meet more and more men who are HIV-positive or have hepatitis and I ask myself how in the world I can be negative. Mr. Lopez often says something while teaching HIV classes that hits home every time for me: “This is a disease of behaviors.” More and more, as I look around with sober eyes, I see the reality of that statement. I live in a prison with more than a thousand men who all come from different backgrounds and different lifestyles. One thing we all have in common is a history of dangerous behaviors. I have yet to meet someone here who says, “I always use condoms so I can protect the people I love as well as myself.” In particular, I would be a liar to make that statement.

The awesome thing about the PACE program here is opening eyes. You can watch it happening in our classes when an inmate realizes some key factor of HIV education that he was completely unaware of, statements such as “yes, you can contract HIV by receiving oral sex from another person” or “lambskin condoms are porous, don’t use them.”

The reality of the situation here in the N.Y. state prison system is that we are a high-risk group of individuals who are either misinformed or not informed at all about HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. The team of coordinators and facilitators in our PACE program continue to work very hard in order to break stigmas and educate our peers. There are a lot more misinformed people than there are PACE members.

The PACE team reads and uses the info in your magazine very often. Thank you for the support and acknowledgeing us here in prison, fighting HIV however we can.

Aron Milz, Marcy Correctional Facility, Marcy, New York

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