February 16, 2005 --  Authorities in San Diego have reportedly found another case of the drug-resistant "superstrain" of the AIDS virus that was recently discovered in a New York man.

The new patient's "HIV has a similar molecular makeup as the patient in New York City," San Diego County Health Commissioner Nancy Bowen told the San Diego Union Tribune.

The patient, whose name is not known, took a blind test last fall and tested positive. It's not known yet if the strain is an exact match, and authorities are trying to locate the person.

If the second case is confirmed, it would weaken arguments that have been floated claiming the New York case is an anomaly, perhaps related to the patient's genetic makeup or his use of the drug crystal methamphetamine.

Those who are not a part of the solution are part of the problem.

Ho's assertion that this represents a new, more deadly strain of HIV will be debated for some time by researchers. But the uproar sparked by New York City's early announcement of the finding (the data should have been presented simultaneously) and the ominous scapegoating of gay men is unwarranted. New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's comment -- that not taking precautions against HIV is a "sin in our society" -- is a troubling example.

Not only has the emergence of drug-resistant HIV already been reported, but a more virulent drug-resistant strain has been predicted since antiretroviral therapies became widely prescribed. In fact, one would expect that resistance to three-drug combination of antiretroviral therapies would emerge over time, in that these lifesaving drugs not only fail to eradicate the virus in patients but also often fail to completely suppress the HIV virus.

Now that gay men with HIV are again the subject of intense scrutiny, one should note that Ho's now discredited eradication theory led physicians to recommend that all people with HIV be on combination therapy for several years in the mid-1990s. Many of those people have stopped therapy because, without the possibility of eradication of the virus, the use of the drugs should be reserved until absolutely necessary. That sequence of events should have been the right recipe for creating multi drug-resistant HIV of the worst kind, yet there is a single case in New York, maybe one other in San Diego.

Nonetheless, if it is the case that after 10 years of these therapies being widely prescribed for gay men with HIV that a more deadly resistant variant has finally emerged and been transmitted to another gay man, it should stand as a testament to the responsible behavior of most gay men with HIV that it has taken so long to do so. An epidemic of crystal methamphetamine abuse and the rise in risk behaviors associated with it in the gay community remains a serious cause for concern -- many consider it a crisis. But, how gay men conduct themselves should be debated by gay men and healthy behaviors should be reinforced. Assaults in the media on gay men's sexuality are not the way to address the issue.