Ishmael Bishop, this almost exactly mirrors the kind of struggle Act Up engaged in in the late 1990s as we battled pharmaceuticals for affordable access to treatment.
It also mirrors more recent patent-breaking struggles for access to treatment in developing nations.
It’s definitely time to break out some old playbooks and start applying pressure. One of the challenges, though, is battling prejudice against the efficacy and practicality of PrEP. I’m thinking of a a recent hatchet job Canada’s respected Globe and Mail did criticizing the widespread use of PrEP.
We’re seeing the same kind of nonsense in the New York Times — as I seem to recall that you’re aware. Peter Staley (Of Act Up and TAG) is working to combat the misinformation with real science, as he did back in the days of the treatment struggle and as he continues to do with respect to blood donation issues.
All of us activists would be well advised to take a page from Staley’s playbook and educate ourselves to the maximum extent possible about the science behind Truvada as PrEP, and about the science behind the false scare of the the rise of other STDs because of PrEP.
M. J. Murphy has written some excellent articles that are worth exploring.
