Bugchasing in Mainstream Media
The bugchasing/giftgiving phenomenon gained press coverage and notoriety after Rolling Stone magazine printed an article in 2003 by a freelance journalist, Gregory Freeman, entitled "Bug Chasers: The men who long to be HIV+". The article quoted San Francisco health services director Dr. Bob Cabaj as saying that as many as twenty-five percent of new HIV infections a year (about ten thousand people) were from men who had contracted it on purpose. Cabaj disputed the quotes attributed to him but Rolling Stone remains behind the story. Dr. Marshall Forstein, the medical director of mental health and addiction services at Boston's Fenway Community Health, was reported to have said that the clinic regularly saw bug-chasers and warned that it was growing. He called the statements "entirely a fabrication," but Rolling Stone also stood behind them. Steven Weinstein, then editor of the New York Blade, an established gay newspaper, called the article "less than truthful" and attributed it to a Rolling Stone editor (whom he did not name) recently recruited from a competing "lad mag" who wished to make a sensation for himself.
Following the article, the Human Rights Campaign put out an action alert, calling its members to "PROTEST ROLLING STONE'S IRRESPONSIBLE 'BUG CHASING.'" Critics criticized the use of the disputed figures by conservative organizations; for example, The Traditional Values Coalition used the article to urge the Centers for Disease Control to cut down on its AIDS funding.
Writer/director Daniel Bort made a 2003 short film on the subject called Bugchaser, which premièred at the 16th Annual Austin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was shot mainly in New York sex clubs. In an interview with the Austin Chronicle, he explained: "The matter-of-fact declarations of a string of articulate, apparently nonsensical people … affected me tremendously. I had to find out the reasons why such individuals will seek suicide in this almost symbolic way." At the Austin G&L Film Festival, the film was shown with an accompanying documentary The Gift by Louise Hogarth.
HIV positive man Ricky Dyer, who investigated the apparent bug chasing phenomenon for a 2006 BBC programme, I love being HIV+, said that an air of complacency about the realities of living with the virus may be one reason why infection rates have been rising. However, the BBC also described bugchasing as more internet fantasy than reality, saying that, "Dyer finds that the overwhelming majority of the talk is pure fantasy." The article also quotes Will Nutland, head of health promotion at Terrence Higgins Trust, as saying, "The concepts of 'gift giving' and 'bug chasers' are definitely based more in fantasy than reality" as well as Deborah Jack, chief executive of the National AIDS Trust saying, "There is very little evidence of people trying to get infected with HIV."
In the Showtime series Queer as Folk a former student of Professor Ben Bruckner asked Ben to infect him with HIV, wanting to experience "the gift." Ben refuses and writes a novel about the incident in which Ben was asked to "poz his neg ass".
In the NBC series ER, season 7 episode 13 Dr Malucci treats a gay man who wants to contract HIV from his positive partner. Malucci asked the HIV- patient if he is 'bug chasing'.
Read more about this topic: Bugchasing
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