Pathetic physician continues to stigmatize gay men for cancer risk

The American Family Association's phony news service, One News Now, recently had what can be called as a do-over.

A do-over is a recasting of a news story and it's apparently done in this case when the original news story is seen as sloppy.

Last week, One News Now published a crappy piece,  'Gay' lifestyle = higher cancer rates , which distorted a recent study which talk about the possible prevalence of cancer in gay men.

Not only did the article downplay the fact that the study's author blamed homophobic stigma for what she found, but it also - via one source, a "physician" by the name of Andre Van Mol - played up an out-of-date book (The Gay Report) as proof that the homosexual orientation is indicative of diseases, such as cancer.

It was piss poor article and I think that One News Now was aware of this fact, because it created a new article on the same subject:

According to a recent report, homosexual men are twice as likely to get cancer than heterosexual men -- findings that one California-based doctor says show the risks of alternate lifestyles.

Results published in the journal Cancer show that the high number of homosexual men affected by cancer may be linked to the high risk of anal cancer and HIV infection. Also, lesbian and bisexual women who have survived cancer were less healthy than heterosexual women who also survived the disease.

Dr. Andre Van Mol, a board-certified family physician of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, decides the report affirms the fact that alternate lifestyles are dangerous. He notes that the cancers are not only AIDS-related, although homosexual men have a higher risk in getting HIV.

"In 2010 at a national conference, the Centers for Disease Control reported that men having sex with men had 44-times the rate of AIDS diagnosis as did heterosexual men, and 40 times...worse than women," Van Mol reports. "So...we're talking an extraordinary risk here."

And here is where One News Now and Van Mol commits the same error as in the first article - i.e. the sin of omission. According to a press release about that 2010 conference:

Research shows that a range of complex factors contribute to the high rates of HIV and syphilis among gay and bisexual men. These factors include high prevalence of HIV and other STDs among MSM, which increases the risk of disease exposure, and limited access to prevention services. Other factors are complacency about HIV risk, particularly among young gay and bisexual men; difficulty of consistently maintaining safe behaviors with every sexual encounter over the course of a lifetime; and lack of awareness of syphilis symptoms and how it can be transmitted (e.g., oral sex). Additionally, factors such as homophobia and stigma can prevent MSM from seeking prevention, testing, and treatment services.

So if One News Now and Van Mol tried to somehow repair the errors from the first article, both failed miserably.  And the lack of ethics and integrity in both parties are still on full display.