OK, it’s great that thanks to medical science, there are life-saving drugs that can extend the life spans of people with HIV to “Near Normal.” But it almost seems like the message being sent is, “Don’t even worry about it. If you get the HIV, we’ll give you some pills and your life will go on as usual. (And they’ll be *free* (wink wink) once we implement Single Payer Health Care). And hey, look at the hot guys who already have HIV. Woof.”
Surely, those afflicted with recurring herpes sores are completely jealous that those with HIV are without visual warning signs. Perhaps the next thing is that peeps won’t feel an obligation to warn their sexual partners anymore. That would be a fatal mistake in many cases. Does anyone keep track about just how much damage the Democrat Media does to our society?
My friends on PrEP joke “What’s a condom? Is that like old-timey PrEP?”
They think they can just bareback to their heart’s content. Theyll just get a shot if anything happens.
Meanwhile STD rates are soaring and some of them are becoming increasingly difficult and in some cases impossible to cure.
And with everyone running around carefree on PrEP I’m sure someday the virus will find a way to outsmart it thereby ruining Truvada for those actually infected.
This will not end well.
Oh and their Obamacare is shelling out thousands for this.
Ugh.
Oh and in some instances you can be labeled a bigot or intolerant if you refuse sexual contact with an HiV+ person. Smh
In California, between Obamacare and other government subsidies, Prep is already just about free.
Incentives change behavior and, as a believer in evolution, I agree that it’s going to end badly with the emergence of various super-bugs.
you shouldn’t be surprised by this behavior, after all the sexual revolution was caused by the development of penicillin.
How do you gay conservatives stand these gay leftists? Doesn’t it make you want just want to destroy them?
“Oh and in some instances you can be labeled a bigot or intolerant if you refuse sexual contact with an HiV+ person.”
THAT has been true since at-least the 1990s in some gay circles. But I still remember the horrible deaths — and the funerals. To my generation “hospital” means places you go to die, not places you go to be healed.
I hear you, Ted B.
But hospitals are still a place of death, under obamacare there’s been a culture of letting the elderly die if some ninny behind the desk deemed it appropriate, not to mention the ineptitude & stupidity in today’s hospitals. The death panels weren’t just bureaucrats, they were & are someone that’s been in nursing school & can, with impunity, decide the fate of individuals. All across the country, I’ve heard the same. There are few exceptions.
@( one of my doctors has called Obamacare, from it’s start, the kill off the senior citizens act.
Maybe I’m being overly cynical, but why would the companies that make HIV drugs want to promote actions that prevent HIV infection? There’s no market in that. “Hey man, I know you’re worried about getting HIV from that guy, but he’s really cute, right? Have some Truvada and have at it, and if you do get infected, don’t worry, I’ve got some drugs that I can sell you that will make you feel completely normal (as long as you keep taking them and giving me money)!”
Some very interesting stuff coming out of South Africa: apparently the new generation of children born with HIV are not developing AIDS. The long-hypothesized acclimation may be upon us… but in the West, where medicine and technology has essentially overruled the mechanisms of natural selection, are we ever going to reach that point where HIV is just another virus, and not a life-ending crisis?
Very naive Sean, hiv should not be so trivialized.
#12 James, I don’t think Sean L was trivializing HIV. He was just addressing big pharma’s perspective & why the wider issue wouldn’t be their concern & he’s postulating on the future of the consequences of the virus. I’m not blaming you for anything either. HIV has so much historical baggage at this point & there’s a tendency to overreact to what the United States of Amnesia remembers as being important, historically, or not.
The issue is actually gay Libs trivializing or actually bug-chasing as V mentioned, something I was completely unaware of, in my happy isolation away from everything single thing gay. Can’t say I enjoy keeping tabs on these things by picking up the odd info or two here & there.
A decade from now gays will be having kidney and liver problems from PREP. One of the thing your liver does is control your aging.
Drug resistant AIDS came to the US last year thanks to Obama removing the HIV travel ban. Once that hits the bathhouses it will be the 80s all over again.
I admit I was wrong about Obamacare. I thought it was designed to take healthcare $$ from old Asians/Whites and give it to illegals. It turns out it was to take healthcare $$ from old Asians/Whites and give it to illegals & junkies.
If there’s anyone to blame, it’s the gay leftie “non profit” organizations for not being brutally honest and being afraid of hurting gay men’s feelings.
They are not afraid of hurting anyone’s feelings. They are afraid the “victim” status will go away. Once that happens, the money dries up. A very bad thing indeed!
@ Hanover: Thank you. I wasn’t trying to make light of the seriousness of HIV, I was pointing out how the drug companies that make HIV drugs might profit from campaigns that attempt to normalize HIV and convince gay men that it’s not a big deal/shame them for not taking HIV+ partners and thus open themselves to risk, no matter how small due to the partner’s diligence.
The second paragraph was simply pointing out that HIV is being “handled” in two very different ways on either side of the Atlantic: Africans seem to be evolutionarily acclimating to it, whereas we in the U.S. seem to be hoping that we can keep it at bay with drugs (though some work with genophages might bear some fruit).
Also, the Netherlands published a report in the 80s urging gay men to abandon anal sex, or at least stay monogamous with anal sex. And the Dutch legalized sodomy way back in 1801 or thereabouts, so they can’t very well be accused of homophobia!
You mean drug companies are trying to increase their bottom line?
Shocking.
What are you? An anti-capitalist?
I mean, one of my best friends has been HIV+ for 20+ years (his partner of over ten years is HIV-). He almost died in 1996 right before everything changed. I’m thankful there are medications out there to keep him alive and make life a little easier for him.
I grew up in the 1980s, and am part of a generation that was scared sh!tless by HIV/AIDS. That mindset doesn’t jive well with a new generation of people who think PREP will solve everything. It’s a tool, not a magic pill.
That being said, I don’t really understand the pearl-clutching when there are so many profits to be made. If you don’t like PREP, don’t use it. If you don’t want to have sex or won’t have sex without a condom, then stick to your morals and only stick with people who feel/act the same. If you don’t want your kids relying on PREP, then teach them right. Because we all know that people f*ck up because they make bad choices. And they make bad choices because they’re not taught right.
Life is so black and white, guys. Come on!
@ CCP: I am not anti-capitalist, I am anti-“purposely not making headway on the problem you claim to be trying to fix to perpetuate your cash flow and thus putting profits before people” tendencies, and I despise the tendency in everybody from corporations to the NAACP. I’m not so devoted to the free market that I think the interests of corporations and private individuals will always align, or that all economic events will be mutualistic or even commensalistic for companies and individuals.
Certainly, people can take PREP if they want to. But they ought to be educating themselves that it isn’t a panacea against all STDs, which is a misconception that has become memetic in the gay community and I can’t account for. Are the drug companies not sufficiently stressing that PREP only works for HIV and not other STDs, or are they and gay men just don’t care.
I was in med school when HIV first became wide spread.The fear then was palpable and lead to behavioral changes that saved lives. I think the current nonchalance is proof that ‘stupidity is a capital crime.’
All the LGBT organisations that I am involved with or familiar with caution that this is a preventive, yet non-full-proof way to avoid HIV-only (not other diseases). How that gets lost in translation I can’t account for either. If I’m being honestly, I think it’s my rearing and the time I grew up that dictate my sexual habits. If I was in my 20s today, I’m not sure I would be as responsible. I would like to think I would be. But, I can’t really say.
Also, I was being my usual flip/sarcastic self in Comment #18. (I wrote that comment in response to the post in general, and it just happened to follow your comment). My apologies for the crossed wires.
It’s not in the drug company’s self-interests to educate the public. Unfortunately. In fact, by avoiding educating, they more or less increase their client-base. The more people who contract HIV, the more customers they get. Ignorance is profitable for them.
My thoughts are that sh!t like this needs to be taught in schools. As in, “You can have sex or not have sex. If you have sex, these are the consequences. If you get pregnant, this is what happens to your body and what you go through. These are the choices you have to face. This is how an abortion works. If you contract HIV or other STI’s, this is what happens to your body. If you elect to take medication, this is what it does to help/hurt your body. You’re on it for the rest of your life.” I’m all about providing the information and educating from various angles, without judgment and “morality.” Frankly, that’s a science-based approach, and science seems to be getting championed on GP lately.
But, well, I think it’s still controversial thinking in these parts based on comments in the past, so it’s better that I don’t say anything.
CCP… Two big leftist fails in your “method”.
1 – The left adores people who make bad life choices ; the drug addict, the pregnant teenager, the HIV+ person, etc.
2 – The left forces those of us who make good life choices to pay for the consequences of those who make bad life choices.
Adoration and payment from others are two big motivators.
Yup. Better that I didn’t say anything.
So,….CCP… Subscribes to the younger Clinton’s version of actions, non-verbal actions and non-action actions. Or just… Plain… Gibberish.
I’m guessing that comment was intended for another thread?
because it sounds like … “just … Plain … Gibberish.”
But, feel free to actually comment on the merits of what I wrote if you’re up to the task.
(As opposed to just spouting off something that has zero relation. Which has become really tired, btw. Again, if I’m out-of-line, feel free to wage a legitimate criticism. But, if you’re just going to comment based on these delusions of what I have written–or haven’t even written–you should really save yourself the time. This was a really good example.)