HIV rises among the young

Many teens and young adults regard medication as a magic bullet, experts say.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
FORT WORTH, Texas -- She never believed it would happen to her.
Even before she became sexually active, she and her mother discussed how she should protect herself from getting pregnant and from sexually transmitted diseases.
She was 16, and like many teens, possessed a sense of invincibility.
Six months ago, she tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
"HIV and AIDS isn't real until it happens to you," she said.
Like many from her generation, she doesn't recall the popularity of red ribbons, which symbolized the struggle against AIDS in the early 1990s, or the AIDS Quilt, which memorialized the thousands of people who died of the disease in the 1980s and '90s.
Her story has become all too common, health officials say.
On the rise
Teenagers and young adults are becoming infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) in increasing numbers, and for a variety of reasons.
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta estimates that 40,000 people in the United States became infected with HIV last year. Of those, half were under 25, and a quarter were teens and young adults under 21.
Dara Austin, the executive director of the AIDS Outreach Center of Metropolitan Tarrant County in Texas, said it's important to note that 24 years after AIDS was identified, the battle isn't over.
"It seems like some of the younger generation is taking the attitude of, 'Oh well, if I get AIDS I can take medicine, and I'll be fine,'" Austin said. "There's so many things that they don't understand. So many of them, even young adults up to the age of 30, have never seen anyone die of AIDS."
One woman's campaign
Lady Hogan, a Fort Worth social worker, knows all about the dying. Hogan, who has AIDS, carries three small photo albums in her purse.
Tucked in between the protective plastic pages are 61 obituaries of friends who died of AIDS over the years.
A bus driver. A nurse. A fourth-grader and his mother.
Her husband, who died in 1995.
"There's people here from all different walks of life," said Hogan, 50, a consumer advocate at Catholic Charities who works with pediatric AIDS patients and mothers who are HIV-positive or have AIDS.
Hogan said her husband, a drug addict, had been in and out of jail and never told her he was HIV-positive. She doesn't recall when she tested positive for HIV, but she developed full-blown AIDS in 1993.
"People often ask, 'Why do you tell everyone that you have AIDS?'" said Hogan, who speaks to various groups, including youths, about HIV and AIDS. "I tell them because nobody ever told me."
Medication difficulties
Hogan, like other longtime survivors, is especially bothered that some young people think that if they become infected with HIV and develop AIDS, they can treat themselves with medication and things will be OK.
"We should know better by now," she said, referring to a common AIDS-victim stereotype. "I'm not a gay male. I've never used drugs, but I have AIDS."
Hogan added that sometimes it's hard to get across the message of safe sex and prevention to young people. Talking about her experiences with the medication that keeps her alive usually does the trick, she said.