Fifteen years after being diagnosed with AIDS and given six months to live, New Yorker Myron Gold, 67, is alive and relatively well. Thanks largely to improved drug treatments, more Americans with AIDS are living into their senior years.
Indeed, 29 percent of persons with HIV are now 50 or older. CDC reports that in 2005, 15 percent of persons newly diagnosed with HIV/AIDS were over 50. Gold wonders, then, why government recommendations call for routine HIV testing only up to age 64. "What about people 65 and older?" he asked. "They're having unprotected sex, they're using drugs."
Today Gold, a former fashion designer, continues his AIDS advocacy work. "My work is what feeds me now," he said. Using an electric scooter to get around town, Gold serves on both the New York and national boards of the Association of HIV over 50. He also attends City Council meetings and has testified before Congress and the New York Legislature.
Gold said that many people are uncomfortable contemplating older people's sex lives, and this stands in the way of the open communication needed to confront the problem. Even many older people themselves approach the topic with difficulty. On a recent visit to a Brooklyn senior center, he said many women, "all over 80," came forward to take the free condoms he offered. However, "They said to me, 'It's not for me, it's for my grandson.'"
11/11/08
NEW YORK: Speaking Out for a Group Once Unheard-of: Aging with AIDS
Source: New York Times:: Karen Barrow; Courtesy of the CDC National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention