Wow wtf HIV/AIDS was discovered by Flossie Wong-Staal, an Chinese-American woman, and she’s the reason the HIV test even exists. AND THEN she invented the molecular knife that lead to treatments for HIV/AIDS. And she’s STILL ALIVE. We don’t hear about the contributions of Women of Color enough, my word. Madness.
Thank you, Flossie. 💜💜💜
Still a good precaution. And definitely necessary for everyone for when life has returned to normal in like three years just in case you meet the love of your life and they’re positive.
Couldn’t share this fast enough.
Rebloging this to add a little more info because it’s very important:
Antiretroviral therapy when used correctly can cause the user’s “viral load” (your viral load is how much of the virus is in your bloodstream), to drop because the medicine prevents HIV from creating copies of itself.
Regular blood tests are done to monitor your viral load, and after taking the medication long enough, it can drop so low that it becomes “durably undetectable”. This means that the HIV virus in you has become so miniscule that it can’t be detected, and by extension can’t be transmitted either. It’s important to note that in order to be considered durable undetectable, you MUST test as undetectable for at least 6 months after testing as undetectable for the first time.
Also very important, being durably undetectable does NOT mean that you’re cured or that the virus is gone, not by a longshot. The HIV virus is still very much there, but instead of being active, it’s gone dormant in a small number of cells called “viral reservoirs”. This why it’s EXTREMELY important that even after achieving durably undetectable status, you continue to take your Antiretroviral medications correctly. Because if you stop, the HIV virus will reemerge from the viral reservoirs and pick up right where it left off in creating copies of itself, and you will have to start all over again if you want to become durably undetectable again.
This is great advice for people struggling with or know someone who has HIV.
It has been amazing to see how aids has been controlled, definitely a win for humanity
if you have been potentially exposed to hiv, and are not using a rape kit, do not first get tested for it to decide whether to seek treatment. your first move should be to seek PEP (post exposure prophylaxis)—a month long antiretroviral regimen—to prevent any exposure from developing into an infection. PEP does not eliminate the possibility of infection, but it does substantially reduce it (by around 80%) when taken in time
you should ideally start PEP within 24hrs of the exposure, and no later than 72hrs. you can avoid infection after exposure, but by the time your blood can test positive it is too late, so dont dawdle and make treatment your first priority
Also: don’t stigmatize HIV+ individuals because they all have different circumstances and might’ve gotten the virus from a variety of sources (sex, occupational, birth, blood transfusions in other countries).
HIV-related stigma remains a huge barrier to preventing HIV, and is linked to a low level of people testing for HIV.
The bad news is that Trump is cutting America’s spending on HIV year after year. He has taken steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act since coming to power.
prep is preventative, pep is what you take after initial exposure
In Capitalist America, sex education is on twitter and tumblr!
On PrEP for about three years now and my master’s degree focused on HIV, so if you have ANY questions about PrEP or HIV please DM me and I’ll be happy to chat. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, let’s chat about sex and HIV.
FACTS!
Additions: if your viral load is suppressed by medication to the point it’s undetectable, it’s considered untransmittable, even without condoms. Children with HIV+ carriers are usually given medication when they’re born, to make sure any of the virus doesn’t take hold (which we also do to adults who fear they’ve been exposed, it’s called PEP ((Post Exposure Prophylaxis)), which is a month of medication and must be started within 72 hours of exposure).
(There’s also PreP - Pre Exposure Prophylaxis, which is taking medication if you feel you are at risk of being exposed to HIV, whether through sexual partners or sharing injection needles)
This is why we need universal free healthcare - so people can go on and have happy, healthy lives despite the HIV diagnosis. Nobody should die or live in fear when the treatment is so damn simple and effective.
Part of attempts to ban all research that involves human fetal tissue, because the superstitious feelings of anti-choice fanatics over useless, garbage corpse flesh is apparently more important than any number of entire human lives.
Progress
What
Imma just let this sit here
MOTHA FUCKIN SCIENCE
They turned RNA into an anti-virus program. That is amazing.
Let me restate this in case it didn’t sink in the first time
Researchers physically DELETED ALL TRACES of the HIV virus from a human cell.
ALL OF IT.
IF YOU ARE NOT EXCITED ABOUT THAT I DON’T THINK YOU KNOW WHAT HIV IS
On a Sunday afternoon in late April, there was a small but buoyant dance party at the fairly new outdoor AIDS memorial in New York City’s Greenwich Village, which had once been ground zero of the AIDS epidemic.
[…]
The reason for the party? It was to celebrate and promote the fact that we now know with certainty that people with HIV whose meds make the virus undetectable in their blood (as confirmed by lab tests) cannot transmit the virus to sexual partners. In New York City, a host of organizations – including the health department and Housing Works – have been part of an effort in recent years to end New York State’s AIDS epidemic by 2020. Now, they’re rallying behind the Undetectable = Untransmittable or U=U message, which is the national rallying cry of the Prevention Access Campaign.
In recent months, a stunning array of prominent international agencies and individuals have signed onto a U=U consensus statement saying that, based on modern science, undetectable people cannot transmit HIV. They include AIDS United, GMHC, the Human Rights Campaign, the International AIDS Society, the UK’s National AIDS Trust and the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD), to name just a few.
“U=U is such incredible news that we’ve been saying we should be dancing in the streets about it,” says Bruce Richman, who started Prevention Access Campaign. Richman says he’s been eager to get the U=U word out since he learned in 2012 that because he was undetectable he was not infectious. (He was diagnosed with HIV in 2003.)
Even since then, scientific evidence for U=U has continued to mount in a series of very large studies, such as one released early last year finding that among nearly 900 serodiscordant (one HIV+, one HIV-) gay and straight couples followed over 16 months, there was no evidence of HIV infection despite their having condomless sex.
This has massive health, prevention and legal implications. It means that HIV-positive folks and their HIV-negative sexual partners can all but stop freaking out about the possibility of transmission. It also renders even more outdated various state laws from the 1980s and 1990s that criminalize HIV-positive people for endangering sexual partners when they don’t disclose their HIV status. Finally, it should serve to reduce the stigma suffered by HIV-positive people, who are often made to feel as if they are second-class citizens for carrying an infectious virus.
But despite all that – and despite the fact that U=U has essentially attained global scientific and advocacy consensus – national, state and local entities still do little to broadcast this fact to the general American public. A brief review of the main HIV webpages for health departments nationwide serving those states and cities hardest hit by HIV found that not one stated in clear language that people with undetectable HIV were incapable of transmitting the virus.
[…]
“None of the websites are saying this, none of the marketing campaigns,” says Richman. “I’ve found that people who know this information tend to be privileged, have private insurance, are often white. That is so unjust that information that concerns are our social, sexual and reproductive health and lives is being withheld.”
Richman can become very passionate when talking about how little the HIV health establishment has done thus far to make U=U general knowledge. “When I realized that the power structure thought people with HIV were irresponsible and couldn’t understand this info, I was furious,” he says. “This information changed my life, lifted my feelings of shame and being toxic. That was so freeing.”
“Everyone,” he adds, “should clearly have that information.”
The ignorance of Mike Pence is deadly.
Doesn’t believe in climate change. Doesn’t believe in evolution. Doesn’t believe that smoking causes cancer.
I’m sorry for all the American politics this morning but our leaders are literally trying to kill us.
It’s like we’re all going back to the admnistration from the 80s but it’s 10 times worse
