Tuesday, July 15, 2014

NY Magazine discusses Truvada and what it means for Gay Sex


There's a new article about Truvada and the "freedoms" it guarantees. Many gay men are hoping to use it to have, as one guy said, the sex he deserves.

Here are some key parts of the article that I noticed:
Several months after starting the drug, Gabriel says it’s allowed him to be bolder and more unapologetic in his desires, to have the kind of joyfully promiscuous, liberated sex that men enjoyed with one another in the decade or so after the Stonewall riots brought gay life out from the shadows and before the AIDS crisis shrouded it in new, darker ones.

For some men, Truvada’s new use seems just as revolutionary for sex as it is for medicine. “I’m not scared of sex for the first time in my life, ever. That’s been an adrenaline rush,” says Damon L. Jacobs, 43, a therapist who has chronicled his own experience with the drug on Facebook so enthusiastically that some assume Gilead, the drug’s manufacturer, must be paying him. (It’s not, say both he and Gilead.)
And...
It is not particularly hard for an employed, insured gay man in a big American city to hear about and obtain Truvada. That’s not the case for much of the group that potentially needs it the most: African-American gay and bisexual males between 13 and 24, who, in 2010, accounted for twice as many estimated new HIV infections as their white or Hispanic counterparts.

Christopher Street and its adjacent piers have long been a hangout for gay and trans kids of color. I spent a few days there this summer, asking people I met what they knew and thought about PrEP. In some ways, they weren’t very different from the older guys I talked to about it in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen bars: One of them would know about Truvada, might even be on it, via a health agency like the Harlem Prevention Center, while the ­others had no idea. Many simply said that they didn’t believe me that such a pill existed, that I had bad information.
I'm not completely sold on this new pill and it seems expensive for a majority of folks who needs it. Please check out this article and let me know what you think. I may have to come back to this soon.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It will greatly reduce the chances of being infected with HIV only. If a person's sex life is such that they don't always or just don't use condoms they should be on PrEP. These are the same people who either don't care or don't understand the risk of contracting other STD's.

What i'm not reading (and maybe I'm missing it) is the mention of other STD's including HEP C and HPV. HEP C can be more fatal and less treatable than HIV. Education is everything and too few are getting it.

Anonymous said...

I guess we aren't dying fast enough.

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Viktor is a small town southern boy living in Los Angeles. You can find him on Twitter, writing about pop culture, politics, and comics. He’s the creator of the graphic novel StrangeLore and currently getting back into screenwriting.