May 9, 2005

Supervirus Spotted... On TV

Three months after it first reared its ugly head, the HIV supervirus lives on—if only in the minds of the fearful (and increasingly amused) citizenry. Public-health officials and researchers have yet to turn up a second case, let alone terrifying trends; there remains that one case of the crystal meth-using gay New Yorker with the fast-progressing, multidrug-resistant virus announced in February. And POZ has discovered that his test results yielded a combo therapy that is smacking down the “untreatable” superbug of the forty-something man, who is not only off meth but back to work, thank you very much.

The entertainment value of this drama seems to rise as our friend’s viral load descends, however. All spring, humorists have stirred the witch’s brew of panic, sensationalism and cynicism out there in TV land.

The story got big laughs both times Saturday Night Live’s satirical news show aired a report on the pest, helpfully translating “superbug” into Spanish as “SIDA Fantastico!” illustrated with an exuberant poster-style sunburst. The superbug also did a star turn on South Park, the rowdy,  hypertopical cartoon. The parents of a ghost-spooked kid named Butters try to comfort him with advice that there’s nothing to be afraid of—except, of course, for “Super AIDS…just one teaspoon of Super AIDS in your butt and you're dead in three years!” Poor Butters shudders dismally under the kitchen sink.
 
Meanwhile, off-camera, the doctors in charge of the real-life investigation are standing by their decision to shout first and ask questions later—despite the growing din of criticism. A cover story in New York magazine called “The Invention of Patient Zero” portrayed Thomas Frieden, MD, the New York City health commissioner who sounded the emergency, as defensive and contradictory. “You want to generate demand,” he told New York’s David France. “You want people to think, ‘Oh, I just had unsafe sex…I should see my doctor.’” However, at a community meeting in February, he told a POZ reporter, “We made this decision based on the science. We did not do this to generate fear.”

This week, Martin Markowitz, MD, of Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, where the patient is being studied, broke his silence about the case. Echoing Frieden, he told POZ that the health department’s alarm served “to stimulate discussions of safe sex among positive and negative individuals, encourage health officials to realize the dangers of methamphetamine use and open dialogue on how best to alert people to the threat of transmission during acute HIV infection.”

Feel better, Butters?