Scott Wiener, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, made an unusual public announcement on Wednesday: He takes Truvada, a daily antiviral pill, to greatly reduce his risk of contracting H.I.V.Oh, preventing HIV carries a "stigma" in the homosexual population, you know, among the bare-backing rim-station demographic, folks who Walter James Casper thinks are just swell.
Taking the pills is a practice known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, and some researchers believe it may reduce the risk of infection by 99 percent if patients take their medication daily as prescribed. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012, PrEP has increasingly been embraced by public health authorities and is one of three planks of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan in New York to sharply cut new H.I.V. infections.
But it carries a stigma in some parts of the gay population, and Mr. Wiener appears to be the first public official to disclose that he’s personally on it.
“A much larger segment of gay men should be taking a close look at PrEP,” Mr. Wiener, who represents the same Castro-based district once held by Harvey Milk, said in an interview on Wednesday. “I hope that my being public about my use of PrEP can help people take a second look at it.”
It's not a healthy lifestyle. Indeed, young homosexual men of color are the most likely demographic cohort to contract and die from AIDS. But hey, wouldn't want to discourage that kind of bare-backing promiscuity, because bigotry!!!
More at the link.
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