So, our good friend Dr. Ron Stall of the University of Pittsburgh did a press conference at the Conference on Retrovirus and Opportunistic Infections in early February, and we had every intention to point to the trasncript from LifeLube, but somehow it got lost in the madness. Thanks to regular reader James for putting it back on our radar!Courtesy of TheBody.com, read the transcript in which Ron examines the reasons behind the rebounding HIV epidemic among men who have sex with men in the United States -- and offers some ideas - a "prevention cocktail" - for how to stop it.
It is excellent stuff, shaken or stirred.
Highlight:
"I think gay men are doing as well as any group of human beings could ever do, in view of the onslaught that's happened over the past quarter of a century due to this epidemic. Men are having a hard time staying consistently safe every single time we have sex. But that's true of all men. What we need to do is look at what's happening around contextual issues, and areas where we can help promote health among gay men that would increase the efficacy of our prevention efforts, and increase our ability to do a better job with HIV prevention. I don't think it's helpful to engage in a blaming-the-victim kind of analysis. There are much smarter ways to promote health in these communities than blaming victims."
Read the full transcript here.
The strategy of let's get tested TOGETHER BEFORE we have sex, for A VARIETY of STDs could be included in such discussions. Clinicians informally reported same sex and heterosexual couples are turning up saying we haven't had sex yet and would like to make it more clear whether we have any infections. Should officials take a look at this phenomenon?... over the long term for these sex partners?
ReplyDelete> The final point would be to test
ReplyDelete> what happens, to see whether or not
> the effects sizes we get by
> operating at multiple levels with
> the prevention cocktail are larger
> than when we operate only at
> the level of the individual.
http://thebody.com/content/toparts/art45012.html
> Ronald Stall, M.D.
Not a bad idea--if there were a genetic
test for determining
how badly the drug might harm
a given patient.
You never want to give somebody a
medicine where the
disease and the medicine are still so
not understood. There
could be more long term health
problems than the original
disease.