In a recent posting I suggested that the possibility to show your HIV status online proves “how much has been accomplished in stamping out stigma”. A reader objected that “Actually, no. This is a move to culturally pressured disclosure so that people with HIV can be further minoritized and excluded, and presumed HIV-negative people can couple with potentially dangerous self-satisfaction.”
A search on the Fridae.com website which allows for publicly showing one’s HIV status returns 280 profiles (110 of them Caucasian) stating being HIV negative at the last test (a period …

Yesterday’s posting may have fooled some (I hope not so) but nevertheless contained some truths that would not  surprise many of those working in the field. Later that day, Bloomberg published an interesting piece about Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) and the forthcoming results of several clinical trials testing the approach.
On the outcomes of PrEP and expectated financial returns for the Pharmaceutical industry, Simeon Bennett and Tom Randall quoted Boston-based Josh Schimmer, an analyst at Leerink Swann & Co saying that “The approach may help curb the AIDS pandemic in poor …

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 …