HIV, Stigma, and Rates of Infection: More Complicated than
Reidpath and Chan Suggest    • Sam Singer   • Published: January
30, 2007   • DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0040051  In their essay
in October's PLoS Medicine, Daniel Reidpath and Kit Yee Chan
challenge the widely cited link between HIV-related stigma and
the spread of the epidemic [1]. This is an important question,
given the heavy emphasis on stigma in policies of the World
Health Organization, the Joint United Programme on HIV/AIDS, and
other public health institutions, but in making their argument
Reidpath and Chan misrepresent the connections that other
authors have made between stigma and viral transmission, ignore
evidence that does suggest an association, and propose a model
of their own for which they offer no evidence.  HIV infection
establishes itself first in certain high-risk groups—men who
have sex with men, intravenous drug users, sex workers, mobile
populations—and only later moves into the general population. In
the early stages of the ep