Can Our Generation Stop Hiv? Vice Investigates

[seaguy]

Vice investigates PrEP and whether it has the potential to stop HIV in a three part series http://www.queerty.com/can-our-generation-stop-hiv-with-a-truvada-revolution-vice-investigates-20150604?utm_campaign=wp-to-twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter

[Bttm2go]

That was a great report. Thanks for posting the link. I hope a lot guys view it.

[seaguy]

That was a great report. Thanks for posting the link. I hope a lot guys view it.

Me too

[drscorpio]

I posted links to this documentary on Facebook a few days ago. I was surprised at some of the negative responses I got. I don't understand the hostility to PrEP in the larger gay community. 

[seaguy]

I posted links to this documentary on Facebook a few days ago. I was surprised at some of the negative responses I got. I don't understand the hostility to PrEP in the larger gay community. 

Fear and stupidity.

[bearbandit]

Condoms are a security blanket. Think about it: it's over thirty years since the message of using condoms first started. In that time an entire generation of gay men has come out and they've learned that it's the "norm", the "right" thing to do to use condoms for fucking. How many of us can remember sex before aids? So for many gay men around today, leaving the condoms out of sex feels wrong. They can't quite believe that that little blue pill can possibly remove the threat of HIV from their lives.

 

Add slutshaming into the mix: it's a standby of gay humour to attack someone's promiscuity - "I wouldn't say he's been around, but fucking him was like throwing a sausage down Oxford Street"... Outside of here I know very few guys who'd refer to themselves as a slut and be proud of the fact. The word truvadawhore came about as a reaction against slutshaming "only whores and sluts need to take that stuff", reclaiming the word "whore" the same way many of us reclaim words like faggot and queer.

There's also been an increasing drive towards monogamy, which I'd swear is the reason so many straights are behind the idea of gay marriage, expecting that "forsaking all others" will be part of every married gay couple's vows. Sorry, but I know too many married gay couples who celebrated their wedding night with an orgy or a threesome for that one to stick! But for many the idea of gay marriage includes monogamy - equally I know a number of gay men who became monogamous as a result of fear of getting HIV.

Truvada allows neg men to go out and fuck with near impunity - near, because there's always the risk of other STIs and the rare possibility of side effects from truvada, which thankfully are even rarer amongst neg men than they are amongst poz men. So after the security blanket of something tangible (the condom), the rest has to be fear that truvada won't work and envy of those who do well with it. What the frightened ones don't realise is that the one of the commonest scenarios (in the UK at least) for getting HIV is one partner straying from a monogamous relationship and bringing it home with them. If the poz guys stuck to their meds and the neg guys were all on truvada (and similar in other populations), HIV would die away for lack of anywhere to go. The whole damn war would be over!

 

/soapbox

[drscorpio]

I was chatting with a friend about this. For guys like me who had accepted that bareback was the only way I was going to play even if it meant turning poz, PrEP is just a life line with no real downside.

 

I think the biggest resistance comes from guys who still use condoms routinely (or at least have convinced themselves that they do or will from now on they promise). They have so much invested in their condom usage and the badge of honor it is for them to still be negative because of it that the thought of letting go of it is too much to bear. I think it's a version of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. "I can't do something moving forward that will let me have sweet, sweet bareback sex because then I will have wasted all that time using condoms."

[BiAggieGuy]

Stop it, no.  Slow it down, there is a good chance.  Until there is a vaccine, cure, or both; then it will always be out there.  Even then, there will be people who either won’t get a vaccine (for any number of reasons) or wouldn’t take the cure as being poz is their fetish.

 

Eventually there will be a vaccine and/or cure, so until then, it is prevention and treatment as the only options.

[wood]

Stop it, no.  Slow it down, there is a good chance.  Until there is a vaccine, cure, or both; then it will always be out there.  Even then, there will be people who either won’t get a vaccine (for any number of reasons) or wouldn’t take the cure as being poz is their fetish.

 

Eventually there will be a vaccine and/or cure, so until then, it is prevention and treatment as the only options.

 

Exactly.  Now, other versions of PrEP that are currently being developed like quarterly injections? those may very well have the ability to stop HIV, but I dont have the same confidence for an expensive pill a day prevention method.