I am an HIV positive advocate living in Dallas. It struck a nerve when you talked about the lack of scientific or experiment driven transmission or vector studies for HIV. Along the pathway to today I have met research physicians who support the position of de-stigmatizing transmission risk in certain cases, such as HIV in saliva and yes even non-traumatic anal sex. The key here is size (both that of the anus and that of the penis) and how that can cause micro tearing which is then a vector. But vaginal secretions and male siminal fluid when mixed (intercourse) is the prime vector and it far outweighs all others. With this in mind prevention directions can be modified to focus on this one true HIV vector. I'm not advocating losing condoms in any sexual situation, but your article did not give any transmission rates either. Is that because of a lack of data on penile/anal HIV transmission, I'm sure that is part of the answer. I will be looking forward to your progress in this light. We were recently asked to determine the actual efficacy of persuing a case here in Dallas of a man spitting on a police officer and then taunting him that he had been infected with HIV. This escalated to a DA office here pursuing an extended sentence based on the intent to harm with a deadly weapon - but saliva is not - so as the article said, that message must be passed. I was surprised that POZ ran the story as if the determination (to be made from that court transcript) had already been done by POZ. Are the people at CHAMP aware that the transcript had been recieved by anyone helping with this - I was not aware of that. The point is, I would like to help in anyway I can to pursue justice in HIV driven by real science and pointed credentialed experiments that can then be journlized in formal medical journals, giving guidance and restrictive powers to Federal Justice all the way to the Supreme Court level. Be sure and let us know here in Dallas if the scientific community makes any more progress de-stigmatizing these infinitessimal vectors to the place they belong, the bottom of the list of things to worry about in the struggle to end HIV. Remember Caleb Glover. After the fact of his ejection from the pool, the owners claim that an extensive search for vector information (in particular in a pool full of chlorine water) was not available - and it's not! Doctors who helped us in that event firmly stated (even in writing) that this was not a viable vector. Since then that research physician and I brought up the subject again. At Life Walk 07 he told me that he would like to see kissing an HIV infected person and even fallatio from an HIV infected person both be taken off the list as vectors. We agreed that peer reviewed formal experiments by credentialed researchers was needed. Such research must first be fuinded and the funding choices (of the Federal grant making entities for instance) would seem to me a better door to be knocking on, prior to this conference you are talking about, because they will ask if we have approached the scientific community for a formal statement or to set up and apply for a grant to fund an experiment or set of experiments regarding the essential non-vector nature of most of these stigmatized sexual and non-sexual events. Again, good luck in what you are trying to do! Byron E. Montgomery HIV justice advocate and on the ground correspondent with inmate Willie Campbell who was sentenced to 35 years in Texas for spitting on an officer.