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A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

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Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#81

Post by acct1771 »

aerotwelve wrote: post #61
chimeracoder wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ah perhaps I have stale information then. Last I heard retail truvada will run you north of $1,500 per month in the us. The sticker price is meaningless. Because of the assistance programs, nobody needs to pay it, whether you're on private insurance or uninsured.

Serious question: what's the point of the sticker price then? Surely someone must be paying it, right? If not, why not lower it for -- at a minimum -- a PR boost?

In addition to what other commenters have said, when you write off donated units, they're worth more at that time if their price is higher.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#82

Post by chimeracoder »

metildaa wrote: post #17
drewmassey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is true. The cost of generics is so low but in the United States it remains quite expensive if you don’t have insurance.

Even with insurance, the cost of essential drugs is too high. Our whole healthcare system consists of the care providers billing crazy, unjustifiable amounts to Insurance, followed by insurers paying out a percentage of that. Showing prices up front would be the very least we could do to start to clean up this fraudulent billing mess that is healthcare here in the US.

> Showing prices up front would be the very least we could do to start to clean up this fraudulent billing mess that is healthcare here in the US.

It would, but Medicare would never agree to that, because it would cut off a major source of indirect revenue for them.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#83

Post by chimeracoder »

jschwartzi wrote: post #50
drewmassey wrote: post #9

For me the biggest surprise in the article is that there are 180,000 men in the United States on Prep. Given a back of the envelope calculation of 4.8m out gay men in America (3% of population) that means adoption is itself around 3%. Somehow I imagined truvada was more widey adopted but perhaps it is just heavily marketed on the east coast.

There are side-effects of PrEP for long-term use. It can cause kidney damage. So it's not an entirely risk-free magic pill. It's still much safer to only have sex while in a monagamous relationship where you and your partner have been tested for HIV. And checking test results before having sex with someone is also a very safe practice that is really common. But in the end if you're often sleeping with people who you…

> It's still much safer to only have sex while in a monagamous relationship where you and your partner have been tested for HIV. And checking test results before having sex with someone is also a very safe practice that is really common. But in the end if you're often sleeping with people who you don't trust, PrEP can be worth the risk.

Please stop spreading anti-PrEP misinformation.

Statistically, it is literally safer to be on PrEP and have multiple partners of unknown status than it is to be in a monogamous relationship and not be on PrEP.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#84

Post by chimeracoder »

dawhizkid wrote: post #24

And yet STD rates are skyrocketing in the US. I take Truvada but it’s used as an excuse in the gay commmunity to engage in unprotected sex. If anything the availability of Truvada is probably a leading cause of why STD rates in the gay community are increasing.

> And yet STD rates are skyrocketing in the US. I take Truvada but it’s used as an excuse in the gay commmunity to engage in unprotected sex. If anything the availability of Truvada is probably a leading cause of why STD rates in the gay community are increasing.

No, STD prevalence is dropping. STD diagnoses are increasing, because PrEP requires more regular STD testing, which people weren't doing before.

Please stop spreading the anti-PrEP propaganda touted by people like Michael Weinstein. It is actively damaging to public health.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#85

Post by chimeracoder »

dillondoyle wrote: post #71
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> STD rates are skyrocketing in the US Source? (If frequencies of curable STDs are rising while those of incurable ones are falling, that would be a good trade.)

I have strong personal anecdotal evidence that casual hookups are much more upfront about condom-less sex and in fact I find that a shockingly high percent outright refuse condom sex (e.g. bareback only). I'm not sure if the actual condom use rate is lower (I wouldn't be surprised) but in my experience the upfront non-condom attitudes is staggering and way higher than 10 years ago. Tech, attitudes, PrEP have shifted…

> I have strong personal anecdotal evidence that casual hookups are much more upfront about condom-less sex and in fact I find that a shockingly high percent outright refuse condom sex (e.g. bareback only). I'm not sure if the actual condom use rate is lower (I wouldn't be surprised) but in my experience the upfront non-condom attitudes is staggering and way higher than 10 years ago. Tech, attitudes, PrEP have shifted culture and depressingly for me lowers match rates from an already tiny population in my experience by more than 50% of guys on hook up apps !

Condom usage has been dropping for decades. It began dropping before ARVs were discovered in the 90s, and it's steadily decreased in the years before PrEP was discovered as well. There are a lot of well-studied reasons for this.

So yes, you're right that fewer people are using condoms today than they were 10 years ago, but the correlation runs the other way. The search for a different prevention tool (which resulted in PrEP) was motivated by the fact that people have realized for decades that condoms were not going to be a viable long-term solution for addressing the spread of sexually-transmitted HIV.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#86

Post by chimeracoder »

dogma1138 wrote: post #47
killjoywashere wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most things in science, be suspicious of pure logical arguments. The question for any test, even a true-false, is first a matter of "how much". Antibodies fade over time , ergo various vaccine boosters, such as tetanus. At some point, we can't detect it.

I don’t know why is this being downvoted. Anti bodies are produced to combat a pathogen if the levels of the pathogen are below of what would trigger the immune system you will not produce anti bodies and the ones that you have had produced will fade of over time you don’t have anti bodies for every pathogen you encounter flowing through your blood that would likely kill you. If the pill can reduce the virus to trace…

> If the pill can reduce the virus to trace levels and prevent HIV from developing into AIDS it’s not unreasonable to question if it can affect current HIV detection protocols.

It is, because

a) we're talking about PrEP, a treatment for HIV- people

b) Truvada has already been used to treat HIV+ for the past ~15 years.

c) HIV screening for blood donations uses antibody testing, which has nothing to do with viral load.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#87

Post by [deleted] »

chimeracoder wrote: post #83
jschwartzi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are side-effects of PrEP for long-term use. It can cause kidney damage. So it's not an entirely risk-free magic pill. It's still much safer to only have sex while in a monagamous relationship where you and your partner have been tested for HIV. And checking test results before having sex with someone is also a very safe practice that is really common. But in the end if you're often sleeping with people who you…

> It's still much safer to only have sex while in a monagamous relationship where you and your partner have been tested for HIV. And checking test results before having sex with someone is also a very safe practice that is really common. But in the end if you're often sleeping with people who you don't trust, PrEP can be worth the risk. Please stop spreading anti-PrEP misinformation. Statistically, it is literally sa…

[deleted]

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#88

Post by jschwartzi »

chimeracoder wrote: post #83
jschwartzi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are side-effects of PrEP for long-term use. It can cause kidney damage. So it's not an entirely risk-free magic pill. It's still much safer to only have sex while in a monagamous relationship where you and your partner have been tested for HIV. And checking test results before having sex with someone is also a very safe practice that is really common. But in the end if you're often sleeping with people who you…

> It's still much safer to only have sex while in a monagamous relationship where you and your partner have been tested for HIV. And checking test results before having sex with someone is also a very safe practice that is really common. But in the end if you're often sleeping with people who you don't trust, PrEP can be worth the risk. Please stop spreading anti-PrEP misinformation. Statistically, it is literally sa…

Actually I've been googling around since you've said this, and I can find WHO and CDC booklets indicating that PrEP is generally safe. In fact, the WHO indicates that PrEP is as safe as placebo in the populations that have been studied.

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/197906/WHO_H...

It's interesting because some of the gay men I spoke with about PrEP seemed to think there were significant risks of kidney damage from long-term use. I wonder where they got their information from.

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#89

Post by wmeredith »

chimeracoder wrote: post #82
metildaa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with insurance, the cost of essential drugs is too high. Our whole healthcare system consists of the care providers billing crazy, unjustifiable amounts to Insurance, followed by insurers paying out a percentage of that. Showing prices up front would be the very least we could do to start to clean up this fraudulent billing mess that is healthcare here in the US.

> Showing prices up front would be the very least we could do to start to clean up this fraudulent billing mess that is healthcare here in the US. It would, but Medicare would never agree to that, because it would cut off a major source of indirect revenue for them.

Medicare is not a decision making body. What are you talking about?

Re: A Blue Pill Is Stopping HIV, World-First Study Shows

#90

Post by dillondoyle »

chimeracoder wrote: post #85
dillondoyle wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have strong personal anecdotal evidence that casual hookups are much more upfront about condom-less sex and in fact I find that a shockingly high percent outright refuse condom sex (e.g. bareback only). I'm not sure if the actual condom use rate is lower (I wouldn't be surprised) but in my experience the upfront non-condom attitudes is staggering and way higher than 10 years ago. Tech, attitudes, PrEP have shifted…

> I have strong personal anecdotal evidence that casual hookups are much more upfront about condom-less sex and in fact I find that a shockingly high percent outright refuse condom sex (e.g. bareback only). I'm not sure if the actual condom use rate is lower (I wouldn't be surprised) but in my experience the upfront non-condom attitudes is staggering and way higher than 10 years ago. Tech, attitudes, PrEP have shifte…

Yeah for me the big change I dont think so much is actual condom usage but the up front attitudes. 10 years ago on hookup apps if you said 'bareback only' it would have been taboo to most. But now it seems like that's acceptable and a surprisingly large percent refuse condoms period which is crazy to me. Like for this percent of users sex with a condom is worse than no sex which is what's crazy to me..
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