'Out of Control: AIDS in Black America'

[Guest guest]

'Out of Control: AIDS in Black America'

A Special Edition of 'Primetime' with Terry Moran and a Special

Segment Featuring Jennings Looks at America's Silent Killer

Aug. 23, 2006— - As the world marked the 25th anniversary of the

first reported cases of AIDS this summer, one important story was

mostly ignored: AIDS is an epidemic in the African American community

and it's spreading fast.

Watch Primetime's special report " Out of Control: AIDS in Black

America, " Thursday, Aug. 24, at 10 p.m.

Shortly before his cancer diagnosis, Jennings started work on a

one-hour documentary devoted solely to the issue of AIDS in Black

America. ABC News has now finished his work in a one-hour Special

Edition of " Primetime, " reported by Terry Moran, airing Thursday,

Aug. 24, at 10 PM.

" In America today, AIDS is virtually a black disease, by any

measure, " says Phill , executive director of The Black AIDS

Institute in Los Angeles. also points out that while many

black American leaders and celebrities have embraced the cause of the

epidemic's toll in Africa, few have devoted similar energy to the

crisis here at home.

Jennings's contribution to the hour is a candid group discussion he

conducted with HIV-positive African American men in Atlanta about the

harsh realities of dealing with AIDS in Black America.

Black Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but account

for over 50 percent of all new cases of HIV, the virus that causes

AIDS. That infection rate is eight times the rate of whites. Among

women, the numbers are even more shocking--- almost 70 percent of all

newly diagnosed HIV-positive women in the United States are black

women. Black women are 23 times more likely to be diagnosed with AIDS

than white women, with heterosexual contact being the overwhelming

method of infection in black America.

Terry Moran talks to experts in several key areas that contribute to

the spread of AIDS in black America, including the disproportionate

number of black men in prison. Prisons have AIDS infection rates five

times higher than outside the walls, and many men go into prison HIV

negative and come out infected, often without knowing it, since there

is no comprehensive national testing, prevention, or treatment

program for prison and jail inmates.

The failure of efforts in the 1990s to get federal support for needle

exchange programs, which have proven successful in other countries in

slowing the spread of AIDS among drug addicts, is also examined. Dr.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and

Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, remembers

the struggle to get the Clinton administration to support such

programs in the United States, knowing that without them the epidemic

would continue to spread unchecked. " You could see it coming, " says

Fauci. " The handwriting was on the wall for a long time. "

" Out of Control " also reports the results of studies from the

Universities of Chicago and North Carolina which shed light on a

complex reality that helps explain why heterosexual transmission

among African Americans is so common. Black men are more than twice

as likely as white men to have multiple female partners at the same

time, these studies show. Rates of all sexually transmitted diseases

are higher among African Americans than other groups, and once those

rates start to rise, says Dr. Jim of the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill, " It starts a cycle. Because now when a

person goes to have sex with someone, the chances that the new

partner is already infected are relatively high. "

And because homosexuality and bisexuality carry such a strong stigma

in black America, African American men may choose to hide their

sexual orientation. Men who have sex with men, and then also have sex

with women without necessarily telling their female partners about

their male encounters, are one of the topics covered in back to back

roundtable discussions led by Jennings and Moran. Black men and women

talk openly about sexual patterns in black America, denial, secrecy,

and shame. " I know of few communities as conservative as the African

American community, especially about sex, " says Debra Fraser-Howze,

CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS in New

York. " And when it comes to homosexuality, it's a real problem.

Nobody wants to talk about it. "

Moran also reports on the role of the churches, traditionally the

most powerful source of political and social activism in black

America. Black churches have been silent on AIDS, says The Rev.

Calvin Butts Jr., Rector of Abyssinian Baptist Church in

Harlem. " When you see the numbers going up, you know you have not

done enough, " he says. Adds The Rev. Eugene Rivers of Boston: " I see

the black church being challenged as never before. There are going to

have to be some tough conversations within the black church, because

the black church is the only thing that black people have left. And

too many young people are dying because Black leaders have failed

their children. "

" Out of Control: AIDS in Black America " was produced by

Arledge; Senior Producer is Kayce Freed Jennings. The Executive

Producer is Tom Yellin.

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2346857 & page=1