rawTOP

If HIV is a gun, then PrEP is a bulletproof vest. And the guy who wants to stay neg, but takes loads from complete strangers without asking their status, yet doesn't take PrEP would be like someone who wanders onto an active shooting range. Where HIV isn't like a gun is that it's less likely to kill. And PrEP is far more effective than a bulletproof vest - so that analogy isn't perfect either. When you have the ability to protect yourself and you refuse to use the protection while simultaneously putting yourself at significant risk - IMHO, the only person who is at fault is the neg guy. Simply put - in scenarios like that YOU are the only one who is responsible for your health. Since PrEP offers very close to 100% protection, I fail to see how the toxic poz guy could be "unethical" for blowing his load up neg asses. He won't actually infect anyone unless they're actively or passively bug chasing. Now, if he's specifically targeting say closeted 18 year olds who are still living at home with parents watching their every move (and hence don't really have access to PrEP) - yeah - that's unethical. But cases like that aren't typical. But if he has some random, anonymous hookup in a park with the same kid - then I don't see that as unethical either. There are now three different types of PrEP, so there isn't even the argument of "well, the neg guy couldn't tolerate Truvada". If you want to stay neg and you're taking loads from strangers / people you don't know all that well - then you need to be on PrEP. If you opt not to take PrEP and you get pozzed - it's because of your action/inaction, not the action of the poz guy. All of that is a little off-topic - except to say I don't see it as unethical to stay off meds and be sexually active. But just like the neg guy should be responsible for his health - the poz guy should be responsible for his health and go on meds when it's time (CD4 <= 500, if not sooner).

They aren't to be trusted - especially big pharma. Just one simple example - Descovy should have been available for PrEP YEARS ago - everyone knew it was (more-or-less) the safer version of Truvada. But Gilead let people suffer side effects from Truvada in order to make more profits. They ran with Truvada as long as they could and then got Descovy approved for PrEP just in time so they could extend its patent and keep the cost of the drug high. As far doctors… Here's a little bit of what's happened to me personally… At one point I went to this gay doctor who treated a lot of HIV/AIDS patients. Literally every time I went to see him there was a pharma rep in his waiting room. It was completely obvious he was getting paid to prescribe meds that were the most profitable for the drug companies. Ethical docs don't take meetings with pharma reps - they go to educational / neutral sources to get their information. And from my time in pharma marketing - when a doctor like that is also recognized by his peers the pharma companies groom them to be "thought leaders". Those are the people who present even the "educational" seminars (aka "grand rounds" lectures). It's just in the "educational" sessions they have to use the generic name of the drug, not the brand name, and they have to also discuss other competing drugs (but guess which ones the thought leaders will say are best?) And… I was a 26 year old kid when my lover was in the hospital with AIDS. A doctor had told me he needed his IV drugs in a certain order. When the nurse went to give him the meds one night the order she was giving them in seemed wrong to me. I questioned her and was told in no uncertain terms that she was right and I was wrong. I woke up the next morning (we had a private room in the hospital where I was sleeping with him) to find him in distress. His heart rate was up around 180 and it had been like that for hours. Basically she HAD given the drugs in the wrong order, and he had done the equivalent of running a marathon all night. He never really recovered from that. A few months later he died. And a year later ARVs came out. If he'd been able to survive another year he might still be alive today. I was young and "white coat syndrome" was at play - I didn't make her stop and call a doctor over. But it taught me you can't trust medical professionals. It was probably unintentional - but she basically killed him. Another first-hand case… When I was 18 I was told I had a seizure condition. A couple years later MRIs came out and I was told I had a brain tumor. Years went by and nothing happened and I didn't always see doctors to stay on top of it. Then I started having blackout spells again and a friend got me in to see the head of neurology at Memorial Sloan Kettering who was a brain tumor specialist (MSKCC is one of the top cancer hospitals in the world). She put me on dilantin and ordered a biopsy (which is a pretty high risk surgery) that was done by the Chief of Neurosurgery. The result was "scar tissue" but they continued to believe it was a brain tumor since tumors can be surrounded by scar tissue. Years went by again and when there was another round of blackouts she ordered another biopsy. This time the neurosurgeon was more aggressive, but the result was still scar tissue. 15 years had passed since I was first diagnosed with the tumor. I asked my doc whether the progression they saw could simply be higher MRI resolutions seeing more of the mass. She said no. I told her I wanted to go off dilantin since I was having problems with my gums (a well-known side effect of dilantin). She told me if I wanted to do that I needed to find another doctor. I took myself off dilantin (it has to be done over months), and eventually found myself another doctor. That doctor sent me to a radiologist who thought my case was unusual. He was the first radiologist in all those years who actually sat down and talked with me. I lent him 22 years of scans and he took a half a day to pour over them. His conclusion was that it was just a scar (as the biopsies found) and the apparent "growth" was due to 1) increased MRI sensitivity (I was right), and 2) MSKCC going in and making the situation worse by doing multiple biopsies. As far as my blackout spells - they're just simple vasovagal reactions - not epilepsy. I didn't need dilantin (and it was harming me - my oral health hasn't been the same since). So I've personally witnessed a nurse at one of the top AIDS hospitals do something which essentially killed my lover. And I've experienced malpractice by doctors who are arguably some of the top in their specialty in the world. I now prefer doctors / NPs who graduated from state schools - they're less cocky and arrogant and are more likely to question their own judgement - which in my view is essential in healthcare. So yeah if you think I don't think trust doctors - you're absolutely right. I question everything and only do what makes sense to me. If a doctor is bothered by my questions I find another doctor. I do take their opinion seriously, but I make the final decision. And pharma companies - they're only in it for the money - not for saving lives. It's why there are so many treatments and so few cures.

It's a good question. Back before ARVs there were no meds-resistant strains because there were no meds. The folk wisdom at the time (not sure if it was based in any science) was that it was good to challenge your immune system with new strains because your immune system gets in an equilibrium with your strain but when presented with a new strain your immune system kicks into high gear, produces more antibodies, which fends off the new strain and helps control your existing strain. My understanding is that you only have one dominant strain of HIV at a time (unless you're a rare case who has both HIV-1 and HIV-2). The existing strain usually wins when challenged by a new strain, but not always. So even back then guys were risking a more aggressive strain winning over an established mild strain. But the reverse could happen as well - a strain with fewer effects, but more "fitness" could win out over a harsher but more fragile strain. But since ARVs came out none of that exactly applies these days. These days the risk for undetectable guys is that they take a load that's meds resistant to the meds they're taking and then their meds stop being effective and then they've got a meds-resistant strain. What I don't now is whether, if that happens multiple times, will it will narrow the number of meds that will work for him? There are a limited number of types of meds and there are some strains that are resistant to a lot of meds - which are clearly bad news if one of those becomes your dominant strain. The more you chase strains the more likely you are to get one of those bad boys. I've known friends-of-friends who've died that way, but I don't know if they had other issues - like drug use, or if they were taking their meds properly, or how damaged their body was when they first started meds (they were typically pretty long-term survivors). So a question for someone who knows more than me… If a toxic guy who had a strain that was meds-resistant for A & B sought out more strains and had another strain that was resistant to C & D take over as his dominant strain, would he still be meds-resistant to A & B from the earlier strain?

Actually that's not what I said. I said guys should absolutely go on ARVs when their viral load was between 350 and 500. Which means they probably should go on when they're around 500 (if they didn't go on sooner). And I repeatedly mentioned 350 because that was the threshold used by the study. It's not like CD4 counts go in predictable straight lines. So someone might go below 500 because they have a cold or something and then be up over 500 on the next test. But when the trend is clearly below 500 guys should go on meds IMHO. As I understand it that was the standard model of care in most of Europe for a very long time and it works pretty well. It's just START showed that going on meds immediately was marginally better for the individual, and substantially better from an overall public health perspective. I'm so against the idea intentionally progressing to AIDS that I've banned it from the site. I think I've made it pretty clear that I view that particular fetish as literally suicidal. The point with this post is that there's a gray area in between going on immediately and "no meds ever" and it's not an unreasonable option for some guys. As far as your "You will already be at higher risk for…" statement - my point is that the START study was the major study behind statements like that and the conclusion was that "the absolute differences were fairly small". If you have other studies that show otherwise, please share them. With a larger sample size your confidence interval shrinks. When your confidence interval shrinks to the point that there's no overlap in the groups being compared, then the finding is "statistically significant". Ergo, statistical significance is directly related to sample size. In this case yes, 1.4% is > 2x 0.6%. But my point is that both are extremely small. (1.4% wouldn't be small if we were talking about an outcome of death, but we're just talking about "complications".) By focusing on the statistical significance and not the absolute risk being discussed you're not seeing for the forest for the trees. The doubling from 0.6 to 1.4 is important from a general public health perspective, but it's less important from the perspective of an individual. My impetus for posting it in Sexual Health is because the poz fetish crowd deserves sexual health as much as everyone else. Calling them "lunatics" is completely unproductive. I'm seeing a disturbing trend of making these issues black and white - that there are two and only two camps - 1) go on meds immediately or 2) "never take meds". The data says there's a middle ground where you can delay without significantly risking your own health. Guys who choose to wait need to understand the numbers so they know the point where they really need to get themselves on meds (before they have actual complications). The purpose of my post was to present a risk reduction strategy that some guys might choose over intentionally progressing to AIDS. If I can get those guys to move from thinking in terms of "never take meds" to "delay while my CD4 is good" - that's a huge win. Those guys are unlikely to ever switch to "go on meds right away", but "delay for a while" is an achievable goal with that group, IMHO.

The bug chasing and gift giving sections on this site are quite popular, so the timing of when poz guys go on meds is directly relevant to a lot of the guys on the site since it's kinda obvious that the longer you stay off meds the more bug chasers you're likely to poz. The main study that people cite when they tell you to go on meds immediately after infection is the START study. You can read the result of the study here: Initiation of Antiretroviral Therapy in Early Asymptomatic HIV Infection That study divided people into 1) start right away, or 2) start when the person's CD4 (t-cell count) was around 350 (which is above 250 where the person would be diagnosed with AIDS). Most medical professionals will tell you that you improve your odds of staying healthy by going on meds as quickly as possible. And that's technically true, but the benefits of going on meds quickly aren't as large as they often imply. The first thing to realize is that the word "significant" in a scientific study has a different meaning than it does in everyday use. Statistical significance is directly related to the sample size used in the study (the number of people being studied). The rule of thumb is that sample sizes of 1,000 or more will result in statistically significant results. The START study had a sample size of 4,685. Because they have a sample size 4x bigger than is needed all of their results are statistically significant. So when you read the results of the study (or read someone talking about the study) you can ignore the word "significant" - in this context it doesn't mean what it means when it's used in everyday conversation. Since all the results are statistically significant, it's literally meaningless. It's like reiterating "…and that was concluded off of a large study". For starters their big measure was whether someone had significant health complications over the study period which was 3 years on average. 42 people in the immediate start had complications, 96 in the delayed start had complications (page 799). So yes, you're a bit more than twice as likely to have complications if you delay the start. BUT 42/2326 = 1.8% over 3 years (so 0.6% per year) vs 96/2359 = 4.1% over 3 years (so 1.4% per year). If it were a matter of doubling a 10% risk, I could see the point. And from a public health perspective I get the point. But from a personal perspective a 1.4% chance of a complication each year isn't that much. They actually say as much… So if you're someone who already has serious health issues that would be complicated by HIV - absolutely go on meds quickly, because every little bit can help you. Or if you want to make sure you don't transmit HIV to anyone else - absolutely go on meds quickly. But apart from issues like that - it's your body, your health - you're allowed to choose not to go on meds right away. Do what makes the most sense in your situation. The other issue with the study was that six of the (numerous) sponsors of the study were pharmaceutical companies. Most of the discussion of this study makes it sound like it's imperative that people start HIV meds immediately. I worked in pharmaceutical marketing in the late 90s. We recruited "thought leaders" who would push other doctors to do what the pharmaceutical companies wanted them to do. The fact that a study that said that "the absolute differences were fairly small" is getting spun to "you must go on meds immediately" - that's doctors saying what the pharma companies want them to say. The pharma companies got their thought leaders to convince other doctors to say that. When it's done well the process is really subtle. I know because that was literally our job (for other drugs/conditions) - the company I worked for published journal articles for pharma companies and organized promotional and non-promotional meetings for them. The non-promotional meetings were often fairly ethical (e.g. getting the word out to busy doctors about a new, effective drug). But in hindsight the promotional meetings and the journal articles (where bad results are never published) were usually really unethical. The promotional meetings were often at ski resorts, or golf clubs. Even the quickie follow-up meetings were at really expensive restaurants. I should also mention that the START study was published in 2015 and there's been more research since then that's pointed to other possible benefits of starting meds early. But the research I'm aware of is mostly about whether people can be completely cured of HIV at some point in the future and those studies have hinted that there's the possibility that having gone on meds quickly will help in that respect - but AFAIK there hasn't been any firm conclusions on that since only about two people have ever been permanently cured of HIV (via a procedure with a 20% fatality rate - they were cancer patients so the risk made sense). And I want to make clear - I'm absolutely opposed to the "never take meds" folks. Yes, you have the right to commit suicide, but I'm never going to encourage someone to do so. And it literally is suicide to not ever take meds, or to take them haphazardly once you need to start them. The medical/scientific community generally agrees that you absolutely should go on them when your CD4 drops into the 350 to 500 range. Please go on at least by that point. A 1.4% per year risk of mostly non-fatal problems isn't crazy. But in the mid-90s (before ARVs came out) I cared for a lover who died of AIDS - it's not pretty and it is literally suicidal to want that experience when there are meds to prevent it. As a bottom line I'll repeat - it's your body - make the informed decision that you're most comfortable with. Your doctor should not make you feel like you're crazy if you want to wait a bit to go on meds (provided your CD4 stays over the 350-500 range).

Not only that, our current Vice-President co-sponsored FOSTA/SESTA. So the situation is unlikely to change any time soon. https://filtermag.org/presidential-hopeful-kamala-harris-made-sex-workers-lives-more-dangerous/

To answer some of the recent questions… What you can do depends on your member rank - the one shown under your avatar when you do a post. When it no longer says "New Members" you'll be able to do things like DMs and ratings. As that continues to change you can do a larger number of DMs and ratings. And the logic of allowing you to do public posts before DMs is pretty simple - spam in public posts is caught and reported more quickly since it's seen by more people. And also the site benefits from public discussion - much less so from DMs.

I should add that if I had my way I'd let Senior Members initiate conversations and then have zero limits on those conversations. But the software that powers this site isn't that flexible. And I know I've said I'm developing other sites and it's been forever and you probably don't believe me by now. BUT after a few years where I wasn't making much progress, I'm back at my programming. For personal reasons chat and messaging aren't my top priority right now, but I will get to them in the coming months. Once I do that, the other sites will be better for DMs. (Hopefully I can do it in a way that's not too confusing.)

For far too long @drscorpio has been doing the bulk of the moderation here. I'm happy to announce that, going forward, @viking8x6 and @a6uldeve84u will also be moderating your posts. a6uldeve84u has been with the site for 11 1/2 years, viking8x6 for 9 1/2 years. Please be kind to them - especially the first few weeks as they learn how to be moderators.

Very strange. Given that the only place it seems to appear is on his profile, then it should effectively disappear when his account is deleted. [I just got a white page when I tried to view the image - no error.]

I don't see you as having any galleries on your profile page.

Use the "Report" function next to the post and a moderator will take care of it.

Some email hosts reject emails from Breeding Zone because they contain adult content. Others reject the email because they don't like the name that's been assigned to the IP address (despite the fact that there's nothing technically wrong with it). There are hard bounces and soft bounces. I think (but not 100% sure) that you'd see that message only when there's a hard bounce. It's not an issue on our end - you'd need to talk to your email host about why our emails are getting blocked. If that doesn't work, you'll need to change to a more adult-friendly email host.

If you use the "report" function next to the photo, a moderator will delete the photo.

I don't mean to start an argument or anything, but the fact that COVID is deer populations and their strains of COVID match the strains of COVID in the humans near them suggests that even if humans did everything perfectly, we'll never quite get rid of COVID because the deer can infect us the same way we infected them.

Apologies, but just before Christmas I was trying to update the plugin for account deletions and managed to delete all the pending account deletions. The plugin wouldn't update, so I did a delete and reinstall not realizing it would delete the data. SO, if you requested account deletion before Christmas you'll need to request it again. When you re-request deletion, if you mention roughly when you requested it previously, I'll do the account deletion before I would otherwise.

Thanks for all your responses!!

[Note: this isn't specifically about sexual health, more about health in general. So not a perfect fit for this part of the site, but a closer fit than other parts of the site.] I'm a moderator at a mostly straight discussion forum for the porn industry. Whenever the topic of COVID comes up there are huge battles. I just posted the the following message on that site to see if there's actually more agreement than it seems on some of the fundamental issues surrounding COVID. I'm curious how the gay community differs from that group. So I'd appreciate if you look it over and respond… [The bits about not having discussion are meant for them - not for you guys… Just keep the conversation civil!] When I was a kid I went to a fundamentalist Baptist school from 5th to 10th grade. The kids at the school weren't all Baptist though. I was "evangelical", others were Presbyterian, Lutheran, Charismatic, Pentecostal, Mennonite, Methodist, etc. - even a few Catholics were in the mix. One of the most vivid memories from that time were the intense arguments in Bible class over the minutia that defined the various groups. It taught me that there were multiple perspectives and interpretations to things and to think for myself after listening to everyone. But in hindsight the battles in Bible class obscured the fact that we agreed on more than we disagreed about. We were nearly all Protestant Christians - what we were arguing about was actually really minor. Having had that experience I wonder now if, in all the fights over COViD, most of us don't actually agree on more than we disagree about. Below is a list of what I think are pretty "mainstream" statements related to the pandemic. (Mainstream = what is said by most public health authorities). Look at each statement and count the ones where you agree more than disagree. This is the type of pandemic where your actions can affect others. Vaccination is one of the best ways to protect yourself from serious illness and (depending on the variant) reduce your chances of infection. Vaccines aren't necessarily one-size-fits-all - consult your doctor to find out the best/safest vaccine/booster strategy for you if you have concerns. The pandemic drives home the importance of health and fitness. Masking, done right, can slow the spread in certain situations, but it isn't particularly useful in some environments (e.g. outdoors, at home with the people you live with), and some masks are more effective than others (N95 and KN95 masks are more effective than cloth masks). Social distancing (e.g. avoiding crowds, spending time with fewer people, etc.) slows the spread. All of the above can be helpful and together they can "flatten the curve" but they may never completely get rid of COVID as a threat. "Flattening the curve" is critical primarily when ICU capacity is strained in an area, at other times it is not unreasonable for the community to choose to take certain calculated risks to boost the economy, mental health, etc. Masking and social distancing when you're around strangers in enclosed public spaces is polite since you don't know if they are high risk. There are times when it may be completely reasonable for people to choose to engage in higher risk activities then you personally would engage in and you shouldn't judge them for taking those risks (e.g. when they are not interacting with high risk people and the hospital system in their area has sufficient capacity). These are not points of discussion. If people start using this thread for discussion I will request that the thread be closed. The point of this thread is to find points of agreement - not to start yet another argument about COVID. So simply reply with the number of items you are in general agreement with (you agree more than you disagree). If you have no opinion on some items, you can list the number where that's the case as well. Optionally you can also list the item numbers that you agree or disagree with (whichever list is shorter), and/or the item numbers where you have no opinion. Just list the numbers, not the concepts, since just seeing numbers is less likely to elicit discussion. And if you feel so inclined, I'm wondering about regional differences. So feel free to add your location and possibly your regional identity if it differs from your location. (e.g. "New Yorker living in Montreal"). My response would be: Agree with 10 of 10 New York City

You'd have to be more specific about what's happening. There are a few likely culprits… If you get some message like "unknown host" then it's probably a DNS problem. Chances are Vodafone has the site blocked on the DNS level. Changing your DNS on a mobile phone isn't as easy as it is on a computer. But basically you have to change to a different DNS provider. If you get a message something like "unable to make a secure connection" then Vodafone is trying to snoop on your web browsing and has put a proxy server in place to monitor everything you do. This site is set up to prevent that from happening. I'd rather you not be able to access the site than for your activity on the site to be monitored. If absolutely nothing happens then it could be that Vodafone has the IP address blocked. The solution for the last two options is to use a VPN. But realize many VPNs monitor you just like other ISPs. This is especially true of the free VPNs.

Take out the word "easily" and you're 100% correct.

Mobile/tablet view is determined by how wide the browser is. Widen your browser. You'll need at least ±950 pixels of width to see desktop view. If you go full screen and that's still not enough, then you'll need to up the resolution of your monitor. In settings your monitor may have been told to mimic a lower resolution monitor (in order to up the size of things). You'll need to turn that off. If that's not the problem, then you need a better, higher resolution monitor.

Bottom line - no, that's not something we do. And even if we made your profile not show up in Google, it would still show up for all the pages where you do posts. What you can do is change your screen name in Preferences to something new that no one knows you by.

It's worth noting that it's not just BZ - incest has become a major theme in gay porn the past few years.

Grrrr… I'm having to roll back yet again. The idiot software is storing files in those folders that are necessary for things like emails. There's no easy way for me to figure out what's orphaned, so there's no way to delete the orphaned files. Oh well.

This was necessary for a few reasons… First, a Korean guy with exposure fetish uploaded a half dozen or so high res pics of himself naked showing his ID. Apparently, recently he must have changed his mind. The status updates on his profile were deleted, but the images they showed weren't (a bug in the software running the site). So while they weren't used anywhere, if you knew the URL, they were still there. Since the pics had personally identifiable information I felt it was important to get them down even though there's no privacy law in Korea that would require it (AFAIK). Second, I could use more space on the drive for another project and deleting orphaned files is one of the things I've been meaning to do to get more space. I'll probably have to do a full server upgrade at the end of the year (since the OS it's running is reaching end-of-life) and I'd like to hold off on a hard drive (RAID) upgrade until that point.