Just before “Treatment as Prevention” hit the headlines with some controversy, PrEP or Pre Exposure Prophylaxis, was on everybody’s lips.

PrEP is an experimental approach that would use antiretroviral medications (ARVs, which are normally used to treat people living with HIV) to reduce the risk of HIV infection in HIV-negative people. In this intervention, HIV-negative people would take a single drug or a combination of drugs with the hope that it would lower their risk of infection if exposed to HIV. PrEP trials are ongoing around the world. (Source: AVAC)

Whilst some …

Treatment as a means to prevent HIV infection has hit the media following a declaration by Brian Williams, professor of epidemiology at the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis in Stellenbosch, at the AAAS in San Diego.
Whilst the HIV epidemic has shown some signs of stabilisation in the recent years, more than 7,000 people are still infected every day with the virus that causes AIDS.
Despite interesting results of a vaccine trial in Thailand, prevention is still limited to a small number of options many of which are not …

Lost Decade Gays

It used to be simple: there were the Gay ones and the Rest (though the Rest would have said that “there was us and the Gay guy next door”). But starting at the end of the “sleepy 50s” to climax by the end of the “Glorious 30s” (1945-1975), a sexual revolution had happened and had revealed a world of sexualities.
It was no coincidence that the “Lost Decade” (1980-1990) inaugurated by the abandon of state-led development policies in favour of Neo-liberalism was also the starting point of the tragic …

The first Chinese Gay pageant that was to be held yesterday was cancelled by the Beijing police on the ground that the organisers had not applied “according to the procedures”. Today, the dedicated page on the website of the one of the organisers leads to a Chinese “page not found”.
To avoid “unnecessary difficulty” the organisers wanted the event to have a low-profile locally and focussed reaching out to the international media and local bloggers given the “complicated situation” and the “possibility of increased scrutiny from the authorities”. But the announcement …

It’s for gay, bi, curious and it’s daft. It is an iPhone “quick, convenient, and discreet” application to find a date. So they say.
Thus the other day, whilst trying to have a drink and a conversation in a busy bar of Soho, I could not but notice the unusual behaviour of my friend: looking at his iPhone, then around the room, back to his iPhone and then scouting the room again. What was he up to? Sending SMS to a potential date? Better ask than talking to myself.
It turned up …