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The Rev. Jesse Jackson is calling on prominent black men to step forward and have themselves tested for HIV in order to remove the stigma and help stop the spread of the disease. Jackson, speaking Monday at the National Conference on African Americans and AIDS, said ignorance was enabling the disease to spread among poor blacks, especially women. "Why can't ministers and high-profile athletes and high-profile television people take the test to remove the taboo?" asked Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. "We've analyzed this thing to death," Jackson said. "We must now move from mass analysis to mass action." Conference organizers said HIV infection disproportionately affects blacks, and women are not immune. Prisons are an "epicenter" of the disease, as sexually active inmates pass the infection to each other and later to wives and girlfriends, Jackson said. According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, blacks made up 40 percent of the 929,985 AIDS cases diagnosed since the epidemic started, and black women made up two-thirds of the new AIDS cases among women in 2003. Although many people believe that drug cocktails have helped control the ravages of HIV and AIDS, the disease remains potent in black communities where there is often less access to health care, Jackson said. [more]

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