Rate of Seniors With AIDS on the Rise

Here's some news: AIDS is increasing among those over 50. In Michigan, for example, in 1999, of the 11,145, infected, 1,135 were over-50s: a full 21%. In New York the figure stands at 26%. It has been predicted that by 2015 the bulk of New York's infected will be over 50.

That may surprise you. Older people are...well, they shouldn't be having sex, that is...do they?

Indeed they do - a study done by the University of Chicago in 1994 proved that sexual desire does not necessarily fade after 50. Plenty of seniors are having sex, and plenty of seniors are becoming infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Still, they don't worry so much about the risk of AIDS, they say. The reasons they don't worry are several, but the principal one seems to be that seniors simply are not aware of the truth.

Why not? For one reason, most warnings about HIV/AIDS are aimed at younger people. You may find posters in high school corridors, in birth control clinics, the workplace and even in libraries, but never in a nursing home, retirement facility or in the office of a geriatric physician. Few people connect the elderly with sex, and if they do, it may be with a faint feeling of disapproval or even disgust. It seems that no one under 20 years of age wants to think of their parents having sex, much less their grandparents or even great-grandparents! For many people, there seems to be something faintly repulsive about oldsters kissing, rubbing up against each other, going all the way.

Seniors themselves may mistake the symptoms of AIDS for the normal aches and pains that come with aging. If they ever are diagnosed with AIDS, the disease may already have advanced to the stage where treatment becomes ineffective. Symptoms of dementia may be related to AIDS without anyone knowing. An infection caused by pneumonia or herpes zoster may cloud the diagnosis.

Symptoms of HIV infection include: