Prof Bren­dan Bain has been fired from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona, for mak­ing state­ments that HIV/Aids was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er among men who have sex with men (MSM).The Trinidad-born Bain is re­gard­ed as a pi­o­neer in clin­i­cal in­fec­tious dis­ease prac­tice in the Caribbean and a lead­ing med­ical au­thor­i­ty on the HIV epi­dem­ic.

A state­ment is­sued by UWI yes­ter­day said the is­sue arose about two years ago in a high-pro­file case in which Caleb Oroz­co, a gay man from Be­lize, chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of an 1861 law that crim­i­nalised MSM. Bain's dis­missal came on the heels of calls by gay ad­vo­ca­cy and civ­il rights groups for the uni­ver­si­ty to sack the pro­fes­sor.Bain pro­vid­ed tes­ti­mo­ny on be­half of a group of church­es seek­ing to re­tain the 1861 law which many be­lieved con­tributed to the con­tin­ued crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and stig­ma­ti­sa­tion of MSM.

"The ma­jor­i­ty of HIV and pub­lic health ex­perts be­lieve that crim­i­nal­is­ing men hav­ing sex with men and dis­crim­i­nat­ing against them vi­o­lates their hu­man rights, puts them at even high­er risk, re­duces their ac­cess to ser­vices, forces the HIV epi­dem­ic un­der­ground, there­by in­creas­ing the HIV risk.

"These are the po­si­tions ad­vo­cat­ed by the UN, Un­aids, WHO, Pa­ho, the in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights com­mu­ni­ties and Pan­cap (the Pan Caribbean Part­ner­ship against Aids) which are the or­gan­i­sa­tions lead­ing the re­gion­al re­sponse to the HIV epi­dem­ic," the UWI state­ment said.It said while the uni­ver­si­ty recog­nised Bain's right to pro­vide ex­pert tes­ti­mo­ny, "it has be­come in­creas­ing­ly ev­i­dent that Prof Bain has lost the con­fi­dence and sup­port of a sig­nif­i­cant sec­tor of the com­mu­ni­ty."

The uni­ver­si­ty said that it was for this rea­son that it de­cid­ed to ter­mi­nate Bain's con­tract at the Re­gion­al Co-or­di­nat­ing Unit of the Caribbean HIV/Train­ing Net­work.The Ja­maican Ob­serv­er had re­port­ed Oroz­co said in his af­fi­davit that he is pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed Be­lize Ad­vo­ca­cy Move­ment (UNI­BAM) and the law vi­o­lat­ed his right to the recog­ni­tion of hu­man dig­ni­ty, to per­son­al pri­va­cy and the pri­va­cy of the home guar­an­teed by the Be­lize con­sti­tu­tion.