YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK

WHAT!? Your taxes fund study of 'gay' hookers

$1.44 million in federal money used to research 'social milieu' of male prostitutes

Americans struggling to find jobs and pay income taxes take heart: More than a million dollars in U.S. federal funds will be used to examine homosexual male prostitutes in Vietnam.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $1.44 million for a "study of drug and sexual risk among young male sex workers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam."

"There are an estimated 8.3 million individuals with HIV infections in Asia, one-fifth the disease burden worldwide," the project abstract states. "Initially thought to be confined to circumspect populations of male (injection-drug users) and female sex workers, it is now clear that men who have sex with men are also at high risk."

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Along with rapid increases in cases of HIV and sexually transmitted infections among young men in the region, the abstract states that there's also been an "expansion of markets for male sex work and international male sex tourism." Many of the male prostitutes also have female partners.

The agency says the first study will "describe the settings, venues, and overall social milieu in which male sex work is being situated."

The second study will conduct a survey to "estimate the size of the male sex worker population in each city."

The third study will be a broad cross-sectional study to construct a "comprehensive ethno-epidemiological profile of behavioral HIV risk among male sex workers."

Study 4 will assess negative medical consequences in the population and screen for the presence of HIV and sexually transmitted infections.

"In Study 5, we will recruit young men who have recently initiated male sex work for participation in a one-year series of ethnographic interviews to describe the unique vulnerabilities associated with the early course of male sex work," the abstract states.

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