A new CDC study on gay men living with HIV in the United States found that half of those infected are not getting the treatment they need.
And of those who are taking drugs, many are not taking enough to get the virus under control.
The CDC found that only 42 percent of gay and bisexual men diagnosed with HIV in the United States, only 42 percent have achieved viral suppression.
“It’s unacceptable that treatment, one of our most powerful tools for protecting people’s health and preventing new HIV infections, is reaching only a fraction of gay men who need it,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of CDC’s AIDS branch.
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The survey found that young and/or black men were least likely to have the virus under control, while older and white men were most likely.
Overall, there’s been a 33 percent drop in new diagnosis rates from 2002-2011, but among young gay men, the rate has doubled in the same time period.
via NBC News
Jonathan26
Stunning statistic.
level75RDM
So what they’re saying is one of the most economically disadvantaged subsets of people lacks access to adequate healthcare or education?
onthemark
Queerty, your scary photo doesn’t help! WTF, do you think poz people need to take 22 pills at a time? Are you trying to imply that? (To any untested readers, it’s not anything like that – please get tested!)
Why is that person even holding 22 pills? Very weird photo.
Merv
Instead of wasting billions on Truvada so guppies can bareback, maybe we should be spending that money to test and treat disadvantaged young gay men who have never even heard of Truvada.
QJ201
Correction: Yet ANOTHER study recently reported…
Not “news” as this has been the status friggin quo for over a decade
Meh = Death
Kieru
@QJ201: You are absolutely (sadly) right. This has been the status quo for awhile.
Let’s look at what these pills cost in the United States. If you’re uninsured you’re looking at anywhere from $3,000 to $9.000 for a 3 months supply of one prescription. If you are insured you’re probably spending $90 for the same. Yes there are assistance programs available but those require that you be under a certain income bracket, that funds are available, and that you aren’t wait-listed.
Still … let’s say you’re insured. $90 really isn’t that bad. Except that assumes you’re on 1 pill. And let’s face it… you’re probably on 2-4. So now your bill is $180 – $360 every 3 months. So your yearly bill just to keep your HIV in check is anywhere from $360 – $1,440. Chances are your HIV meds aren’t all you’re taking either; so don’t forget to budget for any other prescription medication you may be taking.
Your insurance provider can no longer cancel or deny you coverage because of your HIV; but they can sure as hell jack your rates up. So look forward to ALSO spending more money per month to just maintain the right to buy your pills with insurance.
And people have the audacity to be shocked that someone might not be on a life-saving medication…
In contrast… in countries where generics of these medications can be legally distributed? As low as $1 per day per person.
michael mellor
The CDC’s figures are very inaccurate. Note its use of the word “estimates”. Such a word is not scientific.
Keep in mind that the CDC wants you to take drugs. There are people at the CDC who have links to the drugs firms. Much research is funded by the drugs firms. Thus there is a huge conflict of interest at the CDC.
The best way to stop getting AIDS is to lead a healthy lifestyle. Even if you’ve got HIV, a healthy lifestyle (eg no drugs etc) will prevent its progression to AIDS.
Merv
@michael mellor: I guess that explains the sudden drop in the HIV death rate after the introduction of anti-retrovirals. It wasn’t the drugs, but, coincidentally, everybody suddenly started living a more healthy lifestyle. Who knew?!
DerekR
Jim Bryant (Michael Mellor) you once claimed HIV was not the cause of AIDS, rather AIDS was caused by poppers, backrooms and staying out late…
Now you are spouting that HIV won’t progress to AIDS if you eat right, don’t do drugs and live healthy…
You are not a scientist, you are not a physician, you are not an educator…
You are an ignorant, misinformed, AIDS denier who just needs to STFU!
Go away!
michael mellor
Once you start taking anti-retrovirals, you are hooked into thinking that you must take them to stay alive. It’s a trick.
DerekR
Stopping anti-retrovirals causes viral loads to rebound and the virus to continually multiply….that’s what happens you stupid piece of sh!t
I wish to God someone would punch you until you were dead…
money718
@Kieru: “Still … let’s say you’re insured. $90 really isn’t that bad. Except that assumes you’re on 1 pill. And let’s face it… you’re probably on 2-4.”
I don’t know any poz person taking more than 1 pill a day. 2 to 4? Damn.
OrwellIsDead
What does this mean for Prep advocacy? We’ve heard for the last year or so that it’s “really easy” to take HIV related meds every day and that we can be confident of this because “poz” men have had no trouble with take up or adherence. Now, we learn that in fact many of the men who need HIV meds, and who are already infected, either struggle to access them, or don’t take them regularly or at all for various reasons. What happens now? More t-shirts?
Billy Budd
@michael mellor: Einstein once said that there are no limits to human stupidity. You are the living proof of this. You are a dangerous person, because there may be people who will believe your insane remarks.
Realityis
@money718: I am on one HIV med, but I also take cholesterol, trigliceride and blood pressure meds due to the side effects of the HIV medication So yeah, 3 or 4 is probably common.
While I was waiting for my new insurance to go thru I had to pay out of pocket for my Stribild. $2935.00 and I am having a hell of a time getting that money reimbursed.
I wonder if a lot of these people not taking meds are afraid of the side effects that come from them? If I had known what devastating side effects I have, I may have had second thoughts too. Unfortunately, I didn’t and I wanted to live. Paying the price for it now, getting ready to put out a few thousand more for painful injections in my face.
michael mellor
There are millions of people in the world with damaged immune systems but absolutely no HIV in their bodies. Their immune systems have been damaged by lifestyle factors such as poor hygiene and poor diets. Diseases such as syphilis also damage the immune system.
The poor lifestyles of men who abide by the gay male party scene are primarily responsible for the destruction of their immune systems.
michael mellor
Realityis,
You are caught in one great big expensive pharmaceutical circle which is bringing in the big bucks for the drugs firms honchos. These honchos are billionaires who are getting richer by the minute.
I’m not here to give you medical advice but I always operate by the following motto: the fewer chemicals you put into your body, the better.
money718
@Realityis: Wow. Are you a long-term survivor?
Bob LaBlah
HIV is a multi-billion dollar business. The worst nightmare of the CEO’s who produce the drug is the cure that they know DOES exist gets leaked or copied. I am not one who pays attention to conspiracy theories but I honestly do believe that HIV is a man made disease and a cure does exist.
I remember all too well the days when absolutely nothing was available for people with HIV (AIDS) except for a hospital bed. In 1984 I was in my twenties and a friend contracted it. I was afraid to go see him in the hospital and the way I shook when I finally did haunts me to this day. We used to have Academy Award winning sex together, hit the baths, parks……the whole nine-yards. Why did he get it and not me…….it was a scary period for gay men.
The real hell for him came when the state department of social services had the same attitude more or less as the church…YOUR ON YOUR OWN. Gay men organized and lobbied to get social security, welfare and housing to open their eyes and see just what was happening. People were being found dead in NYC in the subways, parks and so forth because lack of housing, food and medicine. NYC is now the only place who more or less helps HIV people get their lives back in order. Their homeless shelters are now Single Room Occupancy apartment buildings with all sorts of help for those who really want help.
The drug companies are making a killing hand over hand and aren’t about to speak out against Obamacare because they know it is aimed at the poor who can’t afford medicine and hospitalization. And that’s where they come in.
I love America. Wouldn’t live anywhere else.
buffnightwing
@Realityis: Sounds like you are just hanging on there man. One day at a time.
I do take ONE pill now, and I am doing very well. Regardless of what you think about the drug companies, these medicines are getting better and better, with less side effects. I switched my pills three weeks ago, and three of the worst side effects are completely gone!
I haven’t felt this great in YEARS.
buffnightwing
@michael mellor: What an awful thing to say to someone whom has to take his medicine EVERY DAY.
note to QUEERTY: STOP the personal attacks in here guys!!!!
THIS PERSON SHOULD be REMOVED from the forum for FALSE information and personal attacks.
Realityis
@michael mellor: I chose to live and not take a risk with my life. Until there is a cure or scientific proof that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and death, I will continue to take until I am 80 or 90….
Realityis
@money718: Yes. Found out in 94. Probably exposed in 91. Partner of 5 years lied to me from the beginning and threatened to out me, to my family, if I left him. Stupid me.
Realityis
@Bob LaBlah: I absolutely, 100% agree with you. I believe this is a man-made disease and the cure is secretly locked up somewhere. It is all about money and now they have tapped into the HIV negative population. It’s sad.
Kieru
@money718: It’s rather anecdotal but here is an example of one HIV+ person who was comfortable disclosing his medications with me.
When he first found out he was HIV+ he joined a clinical trial testing the efficacy of 3 drugs. The study was a bust but the drugs worked for him so his doctor kept him on them. About a year ago his viral load started to spike so they tossed in Truvada and presto… undetectable.
So he’s currently on 4 HIV medications.
And that’s the thing… once you’re on a regimen that works; changing is going to be hard. Your insurance may fight you on it, your doctor will be hesitant to affect a change, and if you DO change you probably have to wait 6+ months before you know if the new medication is even working.
That being said there are improvements to ART every year. Many drugs are being combined into single pills, which makes it easier to manage your medication and in my personal opinion, less of a stigma.
Kieru
@Realityis: I honestly believe that one day it will come to light that HIV was a failed attempt to engineer and weaponize a disease. Either there was a containment failure or we failed to understand its capabilities in a testing environment.
In either event; the virus gained access to the general population and here we are.
It’s just too much like an apocalyptic storyline. A disease unlike any we had encountered at the time, capable of being dormant in the body during treatment, extremely fast mutation capabilities. If HIV were an airborne illness it would be catastrophic.
vive
Oh please, can Queerty just ban Michael Mellor (again)!
vive
I am quite sure the major problem is one of access.
I can only contribute a comment from the point of view of a negative guy on PrEP. I have a pretty good he*lthcare program compared to most, but even so, I have almost had to interrupt my regim*n three times due to insur*nce hassles. Running out because they are forcing you to use their m@il @rder ph@rmacy and taking weeks to process the pr@scription transfer? NOT THEIR PROBLEM. Needing a couple of weeks extra doses to avoid running out during impending emergency travel abroad? Again, NOT THEIR PROBLEM.
Stache99
@Kieru: Monkeys have the SIV and monkey meat was being eaten by some African villagers. It’s believed that the SIV eventually adapted into HIV for humans some time in the 1950’s. Viruses can mutate so it does make sense.
Paco
Access – Stigma – Depression, are probably the three main reasons why so many aren’t getting treatment from what I have observed over the years. Stigma and depression going hand in hand. They go from being sexually celebrated by their peers to being something to be avoided if they are honest about their illness. I think some choose to live in denial to not have to face rejection daily and their health suffers because of it. Every situation is unique of course.
Stache99
@michael mellor:I hope Queerty is once again taking notice that you’re again advocating people to stop taking their medicine.
“the gay male party scene are primarily responsible for the destruction of their immune systems.”
Your analogy of people abusing their bodies and damaging their immune system is not evidence of HIV not being real. Yeah, if they just stopped partying and drank more orange juice they would be all better. You don’t know what you’re talking about so STFU.
vive
@Stache99, interesting – I thought that was wrong so I looked it up and learned something new. Apparently HIV-2 (prevalent in Africa but rare the U.S.) indeed came directly from monkeys to humans. The HIV-1 variant prevalent here, though, came to humans via chimps (which are apes like we are, not monkeys), although chimps are thought to have acquired it originally from monkeys.
vive
@Paco, you are right, but let me also add fear to the list. Lots of guys (including me in the past as well as several people I have known) go for years without getting tested, simply because they are afraid of a positive diagnosis. Sometimes they simply don’t have the emotional resources to deal with it during otherwise difficult times in their lives for a particular period (e.g., dealing with job loss or sick parents), which is reasonable, but in a great many cases it is simply a phobia.
Jeton Ademaj
i have been advising the End Of AIDS in New York State community meetings (which formed all the core aspects of Gov Cuomo’s plan) that the best way to encourage adherence is to make *proving one’s viral suppression to potential partners extremely easy and extremely credible, but enabling portable electronic healthcare records.*
while doing that en toto is a technical difficulty, part of such an infrastructure is already in place. NY State and most other states have names-based reporting with a person’s name, viral load and t-cell count history stored in the State department of health registry.
creating a voluntary, opt-in system that would mirror those records, being digitally secured to a degree similar to online banking, and having felony prosecution as a disincentive to fraud…
…would enable HIV+ people to not simply claim viral suppression, but be able to prove it to a high degree of confidence.
THAT allows the transformation of medication adherence from a heavy psychological burden that eventually wears on a person ——-> into a basic act of daily grooming no more burdensome and no less mandatory than wiping one’s ass or brushing one’s teeth. for most, the psychological burdens of adherence are greater than the burden of medication side-effects.
officials at the NYC DOHMH have shown interest, and the largest such community meeting last December had the whole crowded room burst into applause at that proposal.
however, others have expressed anxiety about the idea, but every anxiety expressed has been awash in paranoia, homophobia, serophobia…and basic ignorance about Big Brother.
“Treatment As Prevention” (TasP) is not simply a powerful form of HIV prevention…it is THE most powerful form of HIV prevention, by far.
however, it is also the most intangible…requiring an HIV- person to take the word of an HIV+ person, who may be a total stranger. until “undetectability” is as instantly provable as holding a condom or a Truvada-PrEP pill in your hand, treatment adherence will remain highly sub-optimal.
over and over, i find that HIV- guys don’t care about lectures or harangues about stigma, they want solid assurance of a lack of biohazard…period.
Jeton Ademaj
oops…first paragraph typo “, but enabling portable” should have been written “, by enabling portable”
Bob LaBlah
@Jeton Ademaj: Based on your comment I think pink triangles would be more cost effective.
Billy Budd
I am totally FOR developing a cure and not paliative medications. I am against the greediness and lack of humanity of the big pharma companies. But while a vaccine is not out there , it would be insane NOT to take the antiviral medications that exist in the market. It is insanity to say that your immune system is not damaged by HIV. Michael Mellor is completely nuts and a dangerous person.
Whoever is reading these posts, please always get tested and always take your medicine in case you are positive. Choose to live.
vive
@Jeton Ademaj, I am totally against names-based tracking. It seriously discourages testing. I refuse to get tested in any state that would record my results.
Remember that the Netherlands didn’t collect data on ethnicity for the purpose of discrimination. But then the Germans invaded and got hold of the information, and we all know what they did with it.
BlogShag
HIV is a fucking sham. You sluts might want to take a good look at your behavior, before you put all of your chips into toxic poisons that you think are going to give you a miracle cure. That’s what they said about AZT. We see how many people it helped or saved.
BlogShag
Addendum … IN the early days when there was a suggestion about looking at the sexual behavior of our community, the gay community didn’t even want to touch that one, so they didn’t, they gave you drugs..
Jeton Ademaj
Bob LaBlah: you made no sense, thanks for the Godwin!
vive: names-based reporting is done, it’s in effect…you had your chance to stop it a decade ago. the only jurisdictions that dont do it now will be doing it soon.
given that such databases exist already, why shouldn’t HIV+ people be able to *voluntarily* leverage those records for their own benefit? what societal or individual interest is served by PREVENTING HIV+ people from being able to PROVE they really are undetectable from such and such date?
vive
@Jeton Ademaj, no, in my state HIV testing is anonymized by law. No name is attached to the results. It’s a good policy and I am happy we have it.
If I were to move to a state where this were not the case, I would stop going to a doctor for testing and just do the at-home test, but not everyone can afford that.
vive
@Jeton Ademaj, and I should add that in my state there is no movement to change the anonymous testing policy, so if you want to assert that this kind of thing will change soon countrywide, maybe you should give some citations to support that.
Jeton Ademaj
vive, do you have an answer to my last question directed to you?
vive
@Jeton Ademaj, “…what societal or individual interest is served by PREVENTING HIV+ people from being able to PROVE they really are undetectable from such and such date?”
Testing is anonymized in my state, but no-one is preventing anyone from obtaining a doctor’s letter or a copy of their test results (obtainable via a unique number known to the patient).
Jeton Ademaj
ah…well, i can tell you that 2 years ago i almost bought the Qpid.me app for Android (now named HulaHQ.com, which partnered with the Mister app). the app was originally geared to allow one to sign a HIPPA release with their doc, so that those records could be faxed to the company. this would allow users to forward test results for HIV, syphilis, gono, and chlamydia to either one’s own cell # or to a # one designates in the app.
i wrote to the CEO and asked if his app could be used to advertise one’s suppressed viremia and the duration thereof…he said yes, but that the HIPPA requirements were more stringent. his app has since adopted some of my rhetoric about “sexy incentives for treatment adherence”…
the problem arose when i asked HIV-negative guys on adam4adam who like me but feared my status if such an app would affect their decision. over the next 18 months over 95% of about 180+ guys said “no” or “hell no”…not just to the app, but to printed test results as well.
knowing about NEw York State’s name-based reporting, i asked “what if such an app were secured by State governments and represented VOLUNTARY mirrors of the records State health officials maintain, and had legal disincentives for fraud?”
the same percentage (over 95%) expressed outright enthusiasm for such an app…and for bending over for me.
TasP (Treatment as Prevention) is NOT something most strangers can trust each other over. that must change, and i have yet to hear an effective means for doing so…besides my suggestion, that is.
as one of the authors of the original safer sex bible How To Have Sex In An Epidemic , Richard Berkowitz, put it October 1st 2013 at a New York Public Library panel on ACT UP and AIDS activism:
“Safe Sex only ever worked when it was about The Fucking. any time it became about anything else, it failed. I was a total slut and a hustler, Michael Callen was a sexual revolutionary…we didn’t want to die, we didn’t want to make our friends sick…
…but we didn’t want to stop fucking.”
THAT is what my idea embraces, and i felt quite validated hearing him say that. he’s right.
vive
@Jeton Ademaj, I respect what you’re trying to do, but I just don’t see it ever happening. There are too many legal and personal stumbling blocks.
I’m not sure my experience accords with your 95% “hell no” poll – is that after disclosing HIV+ status? My anecdotal experience is that more than half of guys take either a DADT approach to status and the rest take you at your word (the “plausible deniability” approach, basically “he told me he was negative so any consequences are not my fault”). Also, most guys are simply not informed enough to distinguish between “detectable” and “undetectable” HIV+ status. In my opinion, if they are going to bottom without a condom for an HIV+ guy, they are already doing it with “unknown status” guys (i.e., those whose say they are negative but could have been infected recently) and so they should be on PrEP anyway, in which case the distinction arguably doesn’t matter as much.