Ahf To Gay Men: Prep Is Not The Miracle Hiv Prevention Drug You Think It Is

[calrockxxx]

Just ran across this article... 

 

AHF TO GAY MEN: PREP IS NOT THE MIRACLE HIV PREVENTION DRUG YOU THINK IT IS

HTTP://WWW.THEGAILYGRIND.COM/2014/08/23/AHF-GAY-MEN-PREP-MIRACLE-HIV-DRUG-THINK/

 

Is this just posturing by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation or is PrEP really as ineffective as they say?

 

I hear guys on PrEP say they only take their Truvada "a few times a week", thinking that's enough. 

 

How soon before we start hearing about "PrEP failure" and guys seroconverting because they didn't follow the directions on the bottle?

[slowfuck]

PrEP is effective by all accounts. Getting past the sensationalist headline, it's true that if people don't adhere to the regimen they could well poz. Where's the surprise in that? It's not the treatment that's failing it's the people it's prescribed to.

[bearbandit]

How soon before we start hearing about "PrEP failure" and guys seroconverting because they didn't follow the directions on the bottle?

I've no doubt that it'll happen at some point - straight women have been using the pill for fifty years, sometimes forget it, and the planet has one more citizen. Guys with HIV are told to maintain at least 95% adherence, which works out at it being safe to miss a dose a month if you're on a once a day regimen. It's the same with PrEP: saving money by taking it only four times a week results in reduced protection. The drug is designed to be taken daily - easiest thing to do is to take it with a specific meal (taking it with food reduces any GI side effects).

Although you use the term PrEP failure, it's actually adherence failure. PrEP failure implies that the drug wasn't working whereas the failure is on the part of the guy taking it to take it properly, as instructed.

[melbare]

Bearbandit is correct.  PrEP works - but only if you take it as prescribed.  A bit like condoms - if you don't use them every time, the wife will get pregnant eventually.  AHF may be playing for headlines. 

[Guest JizzDumpWI]

AHF and DailyGrind are being irresponsible. The headline vs article text don't match. In our "sound bite" society, they headline will get more traction than taking the time to read the article, whose bottom line (already pointed out) is that if you don't take PrEP regularly it doesn't work.

[backpackguy]

For those following the PrEP discussion it cumms as no surprise that Michael Weinstein and the AHF, which he heads, are once again trashing PrEP. Weinstein and the AHF have been anti-PrEP from the very beginning. Weinstein has condemned PrEP and those who use as nothing butt whores and wanting nothing more than a drug that will allow them to bare fuck indiscriminately. He and his organization have NO credibility on this issue!

 

As all of the above posters have stated, PrEP is designed to be taken daily (I take mine every morning with my coffee). While it is NOT claimed to be 100% effective (somewhere in the high 90s), PrEP failures to date (as documented in numerous scientific studies all over the world) are a result of non-adherence to the need to take it daily. Think birth control in women.

 

For those of us who bare fuck, PrEP is the best protection we have from HIV.

[seaguy]

Michael Weinstein the ass hole who runs AHF needs to be removed from his job and new leadership that will stop all this condoms mandatory and spreading fear about PrEP that is unfounded and calling it a "party drug" that has been going on at the AHF in the last couple of years under Weinstein.  To me the AHF has lost it's way under his awful leadership.  Is it really something an organization like that should be spending its dollars on trying to make condoms mandatory in porn in CA when they will never succeed unless you count getting jobs to move to other states which they will end up being wildly successful at.  

 

And now he has this campaign to basically scare people away from PrEP so they have one less tool to use in the fight to prevent getting HIV.  So irresponsible.  It is just like his porn crusade he is not going to prevent any porn stars from getting HIV, there has not been a documented case of a star contracting HIV on the set of a porn in the last 15-20 yrs I think they said yet the way Weinstein would have you believe HIV is spreading through the porn community on the sets of the videos shoots like a wild fire and he is the savior who will come to the rescue.

 

I hope this latest moronic stunt really pisses off enough poeple that they start writting and calling for Weinstein to step down as the head of the AHF so new leadership can come in and get then AHF back to doing what it is most effective at and what would help the most people funding research, providing assistance to those with HIV/AIDS and educating people about HIV/AIDS and what  they can do to keep from getting it including taking PrEP.

[Guest JizzDumpWI]

*nods* right there with you seaguy!

[Poz1956]

Positive Lite ran an article on this titled "The Truvada Wars: AHF Launches Misinformation Campaign on PrEP."

 

It makes a pretty powerful point.  Don't compare PrEP to Birth Control Pills.  Compare poor adhearance to PrEP to poor adhearance with Condoms!  Would AHF run adverts recommending against condoms, because when rubbers are not used as directed, they Don't Work?

 

AHF is PAYING for these ads to run in print magazines in Florida and California.  I find it difficult to understand why the rest of the board of directors is allowing it. This is anti-PrEP propaganda, spewing FUD! (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt)

 

When I first heard about PrEP, I wasn't comfortable with it.  I immediately thought of all the standard arguments against it (without having read them).  But after I let it sink in a bit, I recognized it was just another screwdriver in the toolbox.  One more thing we can use to prevent the spread of HIV, and a pretty darn good one at that.  Why hasn't AHF come to the same conclusion?

 

Maybe it's time for people to vote with their wallets, and stop donating to AHF.  How much money have they taken away from AHF's other helpful and constructive initiatives, to pay for all thier anti-PrEP garbage?

 

Ohhhhhh!   I just got a great idea of how to make the point.  Send them a cheque for some amount (say $100), but write VOID across the face.  Add a note on the back saying "As AHF no longer is interested in HIV prevention, I will not donate to your organization.  AHF would just waste my money by paying for anti-PrEP advertisements!"  (Or something similar)

 

Online outrage is just noise!  I understand that politicians consider a letter by postal mail, as worth ten times that of an email.  This acts as both a letter, and a financial disincentive.

 

If AHF received enough of voided cheques flooding in through the mail, it would make a very powerful statement!  How can we make this idea go viral?

 

Mail to:

AIDS Healthcare Foundation
6255 W. Sunset Blvd 21st Floor
Los Angeles, CA  90028

 

[Guest JizzDumpWI]

I like your thinking poz1956, i will post a voided check (or cheque for my northern neighbors) in tomorrows post.

[bearbandit]

there has not been a documented case of a star contracting HIV on the set of a porn in the last 15-20 yrs I think they said yet the way Weinstein would have you believe HIV is spreading through the porn community on the sets of the videos shoots like a wild fire and he is the savior who will come to the rescue.

A friend of mine who worked in British porn got HIV on-set. But PrEP is still being tested in the UK...

[fskn]

The latest study, iPrEX-OLE (for "open label extension") used sophisticated methods to check for adherence.

Researchers found 100% protection at just four doses of Truvada a week.

It's wise not to take risks, but there is also no need for 100% or 95% individual adherence, as previously thought.

http://mobile.aidsmap.com/Overall-PrEP-effectiveness-in-iPrEx-OLE-study-50-but-100-in-those-taking-four-or-more-doses-a-week/page/2892435

[subbytch]

I take PrEP.  Can finally not care who breeds my ass.

 

The point, still, is to take the medication seven days a week. That's a good habit. Even though there's a lot of give... perhaps as much as three days to keep the 100% effectiveness... I still like the idea of having a perfect or near perfect shield against HIV in my body. I love cocks, loads, cum, and more cum. I just hate HIV.

[Poz1956]

On another forum somebody pointed out something else that make the AHF's propaganda even more misleading.  The two right hand bars in thier chart are for vaginal gells containing tenofovir and entricitabine.  Technically they are also a form of HIV PrEP.

 

I don't think you can directly compair a vaginal gel, or tenofovir infused cervical ring, with daily oral Truvada for PrEP  They are completely different in how they work.  The pills are protecting you system wide, while the action of the gells and ring are more localized.

 

Yet one more example of the lengths the AIDS Healthcare Foundation will go, to further their twisted agenda.

 

Though interestingly I did see a quote from Weinstein that said they actually were planning on running a similar ad about the effectiveness of condoms.  (I'll believe that when I see it in print, framed with the same negative connotations.)

[tallbtm]

Beta Blog (run by San Francisco AIDS Foundation) published a well-written and documented rebuttal to AHF's nonsense and propaganda. It's worth reading and passing on to those skeptical about PrEP:  http://betablog.org/ahf-prep-ad-controversy-numbers-mean/