Laxity cited in fight against AIDS

Stephen Curran and Mary Manning

Monday, May 17, 2004 | 9:37 a.m.

Joshua Montgomery has seen the nation's AIDS epidemic from several sides.

An HIV prevention coordinator, Montgomery has seen friends die from the disease, Clark County teenagers forced to face their own mortality and his longtime partner suffer from side effects from the 20-pill drug "cocktails" used to keep his symptoms under control.

Now in charge of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada youth group, Montgomery, 35, also speaks from personal experience. Diagnosed HIV positive in 1997 and with AIDS last year, he now educates young Las Vegans on how to avoid the disease.

"I see people go through (the disease)," said Montgomery, who shares his own battle with those he counsels. "It's like people going through different stages of (grieving) death."

With more than 2,800 Clark County residents living with the disease, Montgomery's message is more important than ever.

More effective drug treatments have sparked increasingly complacent sexual behavior among the nation's youth, he said. In the Las Vegas Valley almost 2,100 people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since 1992, the year county health analysts started tracking the disease.

Antioco Carrillo, HIV program director for the Clark County Community Counseling Services, said young people who have known about the disease their whole lives often view it differently than only 10 years ago.

"The difference now is that death is not imminent for them," he said. "That's how they feel."

Carrillo, who counsels newly diagnosed AIDS patients individually and in small groups, said gay men still comprise more than half of the instances of the disease, but the disease now spans ages, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations.

On Sunday 41 people gathered in Las Vegas for the 21st annual International AIDS Candlelight Memorial to cry, mourn and remember 350 Southern Nevadans who have died of the disease.

"We need to share and cry and sing, to remember, to recall, to celebrate," said the Rev. David Gillentine, associate pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of Las Vegas, who said he is HIV-infected.

When AIDS first emerged as a disease in gay males, Gillentine recalled, it was known as GRID, or Gay Related Immune Deficiency.

"Our brothers were dying left and right," he said. "There was no light inside the tunnel."

Steven Kalas, a counselor at Christ Church Episcopal, said that in his 25 years of counseling people he discovered that those with HIV are trying to find meaning for their lives.

"We come to make a memory," Kalas said, "because the disease threatens our memories."

Eric Fleming, executive director of Golden Rainbow, said that since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, 28 million people have died and another 42 million around the world are infected with the disease.

Nationwide, 250,000 men and women suffer from HIV or AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Dino Gonzalez, who practices internal medicine and works with AIDS patients at the UMC Wellness Center, said local statistics vary depending on the community. In his private practice Gonzalez estimates that 20 percent of patients are intravenous drug users. In county clinics that number can be up to half, he said.

Numbers are also evenly split between white and minority patients, although minority patients -- who often do not have access to mainstream medical care -- often exhibit more severe symptoms, he said.

Too often doctors unfamiliar with the disease also provide patients with outdated information, he said.

"With all the new advances, if you (doctors) are not in the field then you're behind," Gonzalez said.

Changing attitudes toward the illness -- once considered a death sentence -- have proven a mixed blessing, as AIDS no longer carries the negative stigma it once did and those suffering from the disease now live longer, healthier lives, Bob Bellis, executive director of the center, said.

Because of that lessening of fear, Bellis said, many young people have become careless, and he estimated that most of the newly diagnosed people he sees are under 25 years old.

"Now that there's treatment for AIDS, people have been getting a lot more lax," Bellis said. "They don't realize there are people dying all the time. ... I'm still going to funerals of people dying of AIDS."

Because of the advanced drug treatments, even those suffering from the disease often do not exhibit physical symptoms, Montgomery said.

"A lot of people when they think of someone who has AIDS they think of someone who's wasting away," he said. "I look healthier than many people who are negative."

Bellis points to a spike in hepatitis cases as proof that unprotected sex has become more common.

Now in a position to counsel those at risk for the disease, Montgomery said common sense is the most important part of prevention.

"When two people have sex, each individual has to take the responsibility for being honest," he said. "Because a person tells you he or she is negative doesn't mean they're negative."