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Judge Jules is to become an ambassador for AIDS awareness organisation Dance4Life, joining forces with Paul van Dyk and Tiesto in helping to promote safe sex around the world. The Radio 1 trance star told US magazine Big Shot that he’d lost two close personal friends to the disease in the 80s and, chatting with Skrufff, said the experience deeply affected him.
“The specifics of their illness was never something I discussed closely with them, as the last thing I wanted to do was take away their dignity,” said Jules. “But it was clearly a living hell for them.” Jules said he’ll be performing at Dance4Life’s upcoming global event in November and also revealed he had an HIV test some years ago. “Yes, for a couple of mortgages,” he explained. “I’m not sure whether this is still an automatic requirement for a large bank loan, it was mighty scary though,” he admitted.
His words echoed those of fellow dance 4 Life ambassador Tiesto, who – when chatting to Skrufff when he joined the organisation in 2006 – used remarkably similar language. “Yes, I‘ve been tested and it’s pretty scary,” said Tiesto. “Because when you are waiting for the result you really think about it and how your life would be different if you find out you have HIV. I had proper education during my teenage years and was always scared to get a disease,” he added. “Therefore I always used condoms and never had to be afraid of any STD (sexually transmitted disease) scares.”
New Zealand HIV specialist Dr Kevin De Cock recently suggested ‘it is very unlikely that there will be a heterosexual (AIDS) epidemic’ and called for targeting of at-risk populations, saying ‘it is astonishing how badly we have done with men who have sex with men’. However, London electro-rock singer Fran, who contracted AIDS in the 90s and nowadays works as a counsellor, was unimpressed. “The last time I checked, the statistics mentioned that in 1999 heterosexual sex overtook homosexual sex as the most common route of transmission among new HIV cases overall,” he said.
“The number of people contracting the virus through heterosexual sex both in the UK and abroad is definitely increasing. In 2006, heterosexual transmission accounted for 61% of those diagnosed in the UK and there were an estimated 36,400 people aged 15 to 59 living in the UK who had contracted HIV through heterosexual sex. Need I say more? It’s so much easier for people to still believe that this is a gay disease but it’s not, wake up and smell the coffee,” Fran added. “The implications are that gay people are going to carry on being seen as the problem.”
