HIV & AIDS

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Carl Schmid on the “game-changer” innovations to help end HIV

How is the US doing in its battle to end the HIV epidemic? It’s heading in the right direction but at a slower-than-desired pace, according to a major report issued by the CDC at the end of May. Its conclusion could be summed up in one line: “Hopeful signs of progress in HIV prevention, but gains remain uneven.” The encouraging news is that HIV infections fell 8% from 2015 to 2019. This is partly due to a big increase in the number of gay men taking PrEP and more HIV-positive people being diagnosed and put on to treatment. However, to put that […]

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More gay and bi men allowed to donate blood as rules finally changed in UK

The British government on Monday (14 June) eased blood donation rules for gay, bisexual and queer men – yet activists warn harmful restrictions remain. Blood donation rules in England, Scotland and Wales have long screened out donors if they are a man who has had oral or anal sex with another man. This is because male donors were asked to disclose whether they have had sex with another man during checks. But coming into effect on World Blood Donor Day and following recommendations from a health committee, British blood services will now assess donor eligibility on a person-by-person basis instead […]

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Forty years after first documented AIDS cases, survivors reckon with ‘dichotomy of feelings’

For Eric Sawyer, the 40th anniversary of the first scientific report that described AIDS as a new disease brings up “a dichotomy of feelings.” When Sawyer, who was living in New York, first began exhibiting symptoms of HIV in 1981, he said he was urged by his friend, the late activist and playwright Larry Kramer, to begin seeing “a doctor who’s also gay, who is seeing patients with this disease.” That same year, across the country, a young physician named Michael Gottlieb and his colleagues at UCLA wrote in an official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report about patients diagnosed with a […]

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Without Including LGBTQI+ People, the Pandemic Will Not End

May 17 is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, Biphobia and Intersexphobia (IDAHOBIT). Along with Pride month, it is a time when the global spotlight shines on LGBTIQ equality. Every year we need that spotlight, because, while progress has been inspiring in recent decades, the levels of exclusion, discrimination, harassment and violence LGBTIQ communities around the world continue to face every day are harrowing. Over the last year and a half they have only been amplified by the pandemic. In recent weeks we hear more and more about increasing COVID-19 vaccine access in the USA, in the U.K., and elsewhere. […]

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AIDS activist and creator of the red ribbon, Patrick O’Connell, dies aged 67

Patrick O’Connell, a venerable AIDS activist who sought to smash stigma with awareness campaigns such as the iconic red ribbon, has died. O’Connell passed away aged 67 of AIDS-related causes, his brother Barry confirmed to The New York Times. Living with HIV for 40 years, he spent much of his life fronting campaigns to better educate the public about what it means to live with HIV/AIDS. The son of a wire lather and secretary, O’Connell was born 12 April, 1953, in post-war New York City. For much of the 1980s, O’Conell’s life was filled with rented black funeral suits and friends […]

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A quarter of HIV-positive Americans have experienced intimate partner violence

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HIV-positive Americans are at a high risk for intimate partner violence, with one in four (26.3 per cent) having experienced it at least once, new data has shown. The findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, used data from the Medical Monitoring Project, “a surveillance system designed to learn more about the experiences and needs of people who are living with HIV”. The study showed that not only are HIV-positive people in the US at higher risk of physical abuse at the hands of their intimate partners, but that “intimate partner violence […]

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Biden seeks to ramp up funds to beat HIV/AIDS in budget request

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President Biden, unveiling on Friday his initial budget request to Congress in the first year of his administration, called for ramping up funds to beat the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, signaling he’d continue the PrEP-centric initiative that began in the previous administration. In the preliminary budget request for fiscal year 2022, known in Washington parlance as the “skinny budget” in anticipation of broader request at a later time, Biden seeks an increase of $267 million for Ending the HIV Epidemic, building on the more than $400 million Congress has appropriated for the program since 2019. As it was […]

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A Longtime HIV Survivor on How We Achieve Health Equity

With the inauguration of President Joe Biden, I hope we may now see the kind of leadership on LGBTQ issues we need. As a gay African-American man living with HIV, I have lived through two pandemics. Under both HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, LGBTQ people have had to shoulder the burden of discrimination while fighting to survive. I hope that 2021 is the year that changes. I was diagnosed with HIV in 1984, in the early years of the epidemic. I lost many friends in the years that followed. So many of us in that time never expected to live a full […]

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Virginia is poised to reform its HIV criminalization laws. Is the rest of the U.S. next?

Virginia lawmakers have approved legislation modernizing laws around HIV exposure. Passed after two versions of the bill were reconciled, the legislationwould repeal the felony criminal ban on blood, tissue or organ donation by people with HIV and other sexually transmitted infections; make HIV-testing for people convicted of certain crimes, including prostitution and drug charges, optional rather than mandatory; and strike down a statute making failure to disclose HIV-positive status before sex a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to 12 months jail time. Intentional transmission of HIV, or “infected sexual battery,” would remain a felony in Virginia, rather than a misdemeanor, […]

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Experimental HIV vaccine trial shows promising results

A study that could one day lead to a potential HIV vaccine has shown promising results, scientists have said. Researchers from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and Scripps Research say that a phase-one trial has shown “proof in principle” for a new type of vaccine that could be used against the virus. An effective vaccine to prevent HIV infection has proved elusive for nearly four decades, not least because the virus constantly evolves into different strains to evade the immune system. However, the trial found success in “stimulating production of rare immune cells needed to start the process of generating antibodies” […]

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