by Gus Cairns
HIV prevention campaigners have, it appears, a problem on their hands. Messages designed to encourage safer sex, especially directed at HIV positive people, have sometimes tried to persuade people to use condoms (consistently) by appealing to their better nature and urging them to ‘protect their partners’.
On 5 April, for instance, the National AIDS Trust, in response to the conviction of Giuseppe Mola in Scotland for infecting a woman with HIV, sent out a statement saying that it “Strongly advises people living with HIV to protect sexual partners”…which, of course, we should all try to do.
However a new study of gay couples in the West Midlands who were serodiscordant (one HIV positive, one HIV negative) has found that the more love and trust there was in a relationship – and therefore presumably the stronger the desire of partners to protect each other – the less likely they were to use condoms.
Read the rest.
