July 12, 2010
The Guardian has issued a correction to the article "AIDS Scientists Call for Month of Sex Abstinence," which was summarized in Prevention News Update on July 7. Due to an error in the Guardian's editing process, the article wrongly attributed to two HIV/AIDS researchers the claim that a month-long period of abstinence "could cut new transmissions by 45 percent." In fact, researchers Alan Whiteside and Justin Parkhurst never made such a calculation. "What the original copy said was that a newly infected person is most likely to transmit HIV in the weeks immediately after he or she is exposed to it, with up to 45 percent of HIV acquisition resulting from sex during such a highly infectious, or 'spike,' period," according to the correction.