A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

I wrote a while ago about a media report that really got it wrong about rates of HIV infection among Vancouver sex workers. I alerted University of Victoria professor Cecilia Benoit to the error, as she has done considerable competent research work around sex workers, and she in turn wrote a great piece for Harm Reduction magazine (where the original piece appeared) that sets things straight. Follow this link to find her response, which serves as a fine reminder that we can't be too careful when reading any research document, not to mention the media's interpretation of it.

Update on HIV/sex worker issue I noted a couple weeks ago a report on HIV/AIDS that had wrongly been presented in the media as being about all Vancouver sex workers, even though the study had actually involved only street-entrenched and addicted outdoor sex workers in the Downtown Eastside. Here's a March 14 letter from the authors of the study that sets things straight on that subject: RE: Unintended results of research (14 March 2009) by Druyts, Hogg, Montaner British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS We thank Dr. Goodyear for his response to our article. We fully agree with his concerns surrounding the recent coverage of our work on HIV prevalence in British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Goodyear has expressed difficulty in seeing how this study will benefit the individuals who participated in the research. Of note, estimates of HIV prevalence among at-risk groups are vital in planning for the development and provision of appropriate policy and programmatic responses. We wish t...

If you see this Vancouver Sun article in YOUR local paper, please write a letter to the editor! I'm an advocate for the rights of sex workers, and one of the biggest problems out there is that all the study, research and reporting is almost exclusively about the experiences of marginalized "survival" sex workers - who make up just 10-20 per cent of all sex workers - yet is presumed to be the experience of all sex workers. Case in point: an article from the March 4 Vancouver Sun, a shorter version of which ran in the Victoria Times Colonist and Edmonton Journal today (and perhaps other publications - those are just the ones I'm aware of) on HIV/AIDS prevalence among "female sex workers" in Vancouver. I tracked down the original study and the error begins there, as the information they wrote about came from three studies of survival sex workers in the Downtown Eastside, yet the language they use makes it sound as though the findings are representative of Vanco...