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LA LGBT Center Blasts AIDS Healthcare Foundation For Denouncing PrEP in Powerful Video
The Los Angeles LGBT Center wants to spread the word about PrEP, and about AB 2640, a new California Bill which would educate people about PrEP and help stop the spread of HIV in California.
Sponsored by the LA LGBT Center and the AIDS Project Los Angeles, the bill is supported by many AIDS organizations, but opposed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the world’s largest AIDS service provider.
The bill is simple. If you test negative for HIV, you should get information about PrEP.
That simple.
AHF’s Rand Martin, however, doesn’t agree. He says that Truvada can be “toxic” and “it does have side-effects.” And if, for example, “a 45-year-old man who’s been married for 20 years, who has a fling and panics and gets tested, and is told that he should try PrEP, he’s going to be asked to be prescribed Truvada,” he says, so you are “condemning a person who should not be taking it to forever having to take this pill.”
Truvada can be as safe as aspirin, the video says, referring to a Buzzfeed article that said that “people who take Truvada, the once-a-day pill that prevents HIV, are no more at risk for dangerous side effects than those who take an aspirin a day to prevent heart attacks, according to a new study.”
Furthermore, the bill is not a mandate to anybody to prescribe anything, but instead it’s assurance that individuals who test negative will receive information about PrEP treatment.
Information can never hurt.
Dr. Robert Bolan, Medical Director of the LA LGBT Center urges for the passing of the bill, because it will save lives by “reminding medical providers” that they are also “educators.”
For more information, or to sign a petition visit lalgbtcenter.org/ab2640.
Some of the facts highlighted in the video:
California has the second highest number of new HIV infections in the nation.
Expanding HIV testing, treatment and PrEP could slash new HIV cases by 70 percent by 2020.
One in four gay men should take the pill that prevents HIV, CDC says.
Only one in ten gay/bisexual men in California have ever taken PrEP.
Black and Latino men are least likely to know about it.
One in four latino gay/bisexual men are projected to get HIV in their lifetime.
Watch the full video below:
The post LA LGBT Center Blasts AIDS Healthcare Foundation For Denouncing PrEP in Powerful Video appeared first on Towleroad.
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