Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men

Blurb

Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men is a 1997 book by journalist, gay activist and documentary filmmaker Gabriel Rotello. The author discusses why HIV has continued to infect large numbers of gay men despite the widespread use of condoms and why many experts believe that new HIV infections will disproportionately strike gay men into the future. To investigate this, he examines the origins and history of the AIDS epidemic, and draws upon epidemiology, sociology, gay history, ecology and many other disciplines. His conclusion is that gay men need to add a strategy of partner reduction to the strategy of condoms in order to bring new infections down.
Rotello's central argument derives from the epidemiological concept that sexually transmitted epidemics are the result of three factors, sometimes called the Triad of Risk: 1. the ‘infectivity’ of a sexually transmitted disease, or how easily it spreads, 2. the ‘prevalence’ of that STD in a particular group, and 3. the ‘contact rate,’ or the average number of sexual partners that people have within a particular group.