#HIV AIDS

[gardenvarietygay]

What to do now

Or how I stopped weeping and learned to love my community

I hate to remind everyone but the Trump administration will soon be in power. Don't bank on his platform only being campaign promises or rhetoric. Here's what you can do now to prepare for January and the years ahead.

This list is very incomplete, please add more information and organizations if you know of other issues that could use increased attention.

Healthcare:

Medicaid may soon be reduced or eliminated for many people. If you may soon become uninsured please visit a healthcare provider as soon as possible. If you are unsure of whether you are up-to-date on your vaccines, screenings, etc. call or visit your healthcare provider.

If you are uninsured, you can still receive healthcare at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC). FQHCs can vary from area to area but always offer a sliding fee scale, meaning that what you pay for healthcare will be determined by your ability to pay. You can find a FQHC near your using this tool. Find a clinic or healthcare provider that will work for you now, before the administration changes. Heads up that if you live in a small town or a rural area, your FQHC will likely be in the nearest big town, all the more reason to figure out your plans now including transportation. (If you don't have a hospital in your town, your FQHC is likely in the nearest town with a hospital)

If you have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, the Ryan White Program is a federal program that provides HIV treatment to low-income patients. Find a program near you using this tool. Find the state hotline to call for help here. You can also visit your local AIDS project by searching "[name of state] AIDS project." Planned Parenthood and other sexual health centers can provide care, find clinics near you using this tool.

If you are capable of becoming pregnant, find an abortion fund here. I hesitate to give more specific advice on this post, the link will provide additional information. I know it's scary right now but please use legal, science-backed methods of abortion. We are not yet to the point where it is necessary to induce abortion using herbal remedies or other methods, many herbal abortifacients are dangerous to the life of the pregnant person.

Become involved with any and all of the above organizations. Donate, volunteer, spread the word. Most of these programs rely on a combination of federal funding and public support. It is likely that federal funding will be reduced or disappear under the incoming administration.

If you or a loved one are or will soon be eligible for medicare please be aware that traditional medicare and medicare advantage are two very different services. Traditional Medicare is the program which most Americans expect to receive when they turn 65. It is administered through the federal government. Medicare Advantage is a health insurance program provided through private insurance companies. For most patients, the care they receive will be better through Traditional Medicare. It is likely that the information on this issue will become less reliable from the government.

The Center for Disease Control is the main federal agency which provides guidance for public health, including vaccines for children. It will likely be weakened or otherwise prevented from making public health recommendations. Your primary care provider will still be aware of vaccine schedules and able to vaccinate but the burden may fall on you to ask for vaccines. Get in the habit of asking for information on the latest vaccines at every visit.

Environment:

We will need environmental orgs to fight new policies, sue the government, and stall at every turn. Donate to your favorite environmental nonprofit. None of them are perfect, many of them are effective. Find out more here.

Become involved at the local level. Join a local chapter of a national group or a local organization. Visit parks and conservation areas around you, pay attention to any signage that has the names of local organizations that help to maintain that area and join them. If you see "adopt a stream" or "adopt a highway" signs, call to see what the responsibilities for that program are and if you are able to help. In my area, you organize a group of people and call a phone number to register. The requirements are that you adopt the stream for one year and clean it at least twice for about two hours, then they put a sign up that says you've adopted it. They provide trash bags, reflective vests, gloves, hand sanitizer, and trash grabbers.

Obviously, cleaning up litter from a creek or helping maintain a public park doesn't fight climate change or prevent strip mining. Those are problems that require big solutions from well-funded organizations. Those problems are the reasons you donate to organizations like the Sierra Club. You protest and disrupt big projects with organizations like the Indigenous Environmental Network who helped to organize the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016-17.

However, cleaning up litter from one creek does mean that there's one less creek that's clogged with litter. That's one more area that can better support wildlife, help prevent flooding, and connect vital habitat areas that are otherwise fragmented. The organizations that lobby, sue, and stall cannot spend their resources on local environmental projects just like you cannot individually prevent the government from leaving the Paris Agreement.

If you have access to any outdoor area where you can grow plants, you should be planting native species. A balcony, a window box, a patio, even a single flowerpot will make a difference to pollinators and wild birds. Use this tool from the National Wildlife Federation to find native plants which support the greatest number of insects in your area. Insects are a vital link in the food chain, particularly for wild birds whose numbers are in shocking decline. Learn more about planting with natives here. A directory of native plant nurseries can be found here. Native plants can also be purchased from the NWF through its Garden for Wildlife shop.

Humanitarian Issues:

The National Alliance to End Homelessness works with providers and lawmakers to end homelessness with a housing-first approach. They have resources to educate yourself on becoming a better advocate for people experiencing homelessness including things as simple as contacting your representatives.

Get involved with local LGBTQ+ centers. Local LGBTQ+ centers are not always members of national organizations so it can be difficult to find them through a central database. However, you can find an on-campus LGBTQ+ center through a university which may be able to help you directly or point you toward organizations which can help. LGBTQ+ centers frequently have resources for finding queer-friendly healthcare, business to work for, advocacy organizations, and more.

Please keep the people of Gaza and all of Palestine in your thoughts as we fight for change at home. The Middle East Children's Alliance is providing food, clean water, medical and psychological care to families in Gaza. Please donate to them if you can.

Likewise remember the struggle in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Goma Actif provide medical care, food, and water for displaced Congolese. Please donate here. (Text of the fundraiser is written in French first, scroll down to find the English translation further down the page.)

This is just what I've been able to come up with so far. Please add any ideas for actions that support yourself or your community.

[reasonsforhope]

"A large clinical trial in South Africa and Uganda has shown that a twice-yearly injection of a new pre-exposure prophylaxis drug gives young women total protection from HIV infection.

The trial tested whether the six-month injection of lenacapavir would provide better protection against HIV infection than two other drugs, both daily pills. All three medications are pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) drugs.

Physician-scientist Linda-Gail Bekker, principal investigator for the South African part of the study, tells Nadine Dreyer what makes this breakthough so significant and what to expect next.

Tell us about the trial and what it set out to achieve

The Purpose 1 trial with 5,000 participants took place at three sites in Uganda and 25 sites in South Africa to test the efficacy of lenacapavir and two other drugs.

Lenacapavir (Len LA) is a fusion capside inhibitor. It interferes with the HIV capsid, a protein shell that protects HIV’s genetic material and enzymes needed for replication. It is administered just under the skin, once every six months.

The randomised controlled trial, sponsored by the drug developers Gilead Sciences, tested several things.

The first was whether a six-monthly injection of lenacapavir was safe and would provide better protection against HIV infection as PrEP for women between the ages of 16 and 25 years than Truvada F/TDF, a daily PrEP pill in wide use that has been available for more than a decade.

Secondly, the trial also tested whether Descovy F/TAF, a newer daily pill, was as effective as F/TDF...

The trial had three arms. Young women were randomly assigned to one of the arms in a 2:2:1 ratio (Len LA: F/TAF oral: F/TDF oral) in a double blinded fashion. This means neither the participants nor the researchers knew which treatment participants were receiving until the clinical trial was over.

In eastern and southern Africa, young women are the population who bear the brunt of new HIV infections. They also find a daily PrEP regimen challenging to maintain, for a number of social and structural reasons.

During the randomised phase of the trial none of the 2,134 women who received lenacapavir contracted HIV. There was 100 percent efficiency.

By comparison, 16 of the 1,068 women (or 1.5%) who took Truvada (F/TDF) and 39 of 2,136 (1.8%) who received Descovy (F/TAF) contracted the HIV virus...

What is the significance of these trials?

This breakthrough gives great hope that we have a proven, highly effective prevention tool to protect people from HIV.

There were 1.3 million new HIV infections globally in the past year. Although that’s fewer than the 2 million infections seen in 2010, it is clear that at this rate we are not going to meet the HIV new infection target that UNAIDS set for 2025 (fewer than 500,000 globally) or potentially even the goal to end Aids by 2030...

For young people, the daily decision to take a pill or use a condom or take a pill at the time of sexual intercourse can be very challenging.

HIV scientists and activists hope that young people may find that having to make this “prevention decision” only twice a year may reduce unpredictability and barriers.

For a young woman who struggles to get to an appointment at a clinic in a town or who can’t keep pills without facing stigma or violence, an injection just twice a year is the option that could keep her free of HIV.

What happens now?

The plan is that the Purpose 1 trial will go on but now in an “open label” phase. This means that study participants will be “unblinded”: they will be told whether they have been in the “injectable” or oral TDF or oral TAF groups.

They will be offered the choice of PrEP they would prefer as the trial continues.

A sister trial is also under way: Purpose 2 is being conducted in a number of regions including some sites in Africa among cisgender men, and transgender and nonbinary people who have sex with men.

It’s important to conduct trials among different groups because we have seen differences in effectiveness. Whether the sex is anal or vaginal is important and may have an impact on effectiveness.

How long until the drug is rolled out?

We have read in a Gilead Sciences press statement that within the next couple of months [from July 2024] the company will submit the dossier with all the results to a number of country regulators, particularly the Ugandan and South African regulators.

The World Health Organization will also review the data and may issue recommendations.

We hope then that this new drug will be adopted into WHO and country guidelines.

We also hope we may begin to see the drug being tested in more studies to understand better how to incorporate it into real world settings.

Price is a critical factor to ensure access and distribution in the public sector where it is badly needed.

Gilead Sciences has said it will offer licences to companies that make generic drugs, which is another critical way to get prices down.

In an ideal world, governments will be able to purchase this affordably and it will be offered to all who want it and need protection against HIV."

-via The Conversation, July 3, 2024

[politijohn]

Source

[otherbombdotcom]

From the lack of care for community health, to the constant thread of eugenics, and disproportionate effect on people of color and queer people the similarities between the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the ongoing covid pandemic are eerie.

[icemav86]

1980s/1990s safe sex posters part 2

[part 1]

[liberaljane]

Zero stigma, Zero AIDS-related Deaths & Zero New HIV Infections.

Created with Getting to Zero Massachusetts

Digital illustration of a group of people of different ages, races, sexualities, genders and abilities. In the center is a Black woman holding a sign that reads, 'together we can end the HIV epidemic.'

[oncanvas]

(American Flag), Joseph Wolin, 1989

Screenprint 11 × 15 5/16 in. (27.9 × 38.9 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY, USA

[magicfemme]

"let love replace fear through you."

AIDS QUILT SERIES  |  VIEW THE QUILT

[gayest-historian]

Unfinished Painting

The artwork titled 'Unfinished Painting' (pictured above) was created by Keith Haring in 1989. The purpose of the piece is to reflect the lives cut short by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It represents the lost potential of those who died from the disease and the lack of care for it.

This disease disproportionately affects queer men like Haring. Due to this it wasn't taken seriously enough by governments, particularly in America. Keith Haring himself later died due to complications related to HIV/AIDS in 1990, just a year after he created the painting.

I find this painting and it's background extremely compelling. There is a whole generation of queer people, particularly AMAB, who are gone because of the negligence of governments and healthcare systems. They could have done so much but their lives were cut short in a cruel act of erasure.

[helpmeimblorboing]

The world passes by, and it’s cold. The gravestone is warm. In the depths of Achilles’ fevered mind, he thinks it still smells like Patroclus, the warmth of his skin, the cypress smell of his clothes

He kneels in the frozen dirt, and twigs dig into his skin like the claws of the Furies his mother used to tell him about, screaming, raving spirits of vengeance, risen from the other world to punish him - how dare you let him die !! How dare you let him hurt !!

He thinks he’s been kneeling here for years, but that can’t be right. The Sunday chill is still in the air, and the wind carries the smell of his corpse, limp and dead

The stone is simple, just a slab of rock, words carved into its face - PATROCLUS MENOITIADES 1995-2024

He thinks there should be an “Achilles” scrawled beside it. He thinks he might be dead, too

He remembers how he looked, in those final days, eyes sunken, face shriveled. Skinny as a twig. So unlike the Patroclus he loved that he was half-convinced it was a prank

They said it was pneumonia. Achilles thinks it was Fate herself, playing a cruel joke on him

The weather was calm, almost irritatingly so. Briseis came by to leave out some coffee and donuts for him, lest he ended up starving himself to death, but that was hours ago. And Achilles’ stomach felt like a black hole. He hungered for only one thing, and that was now forever beyond his reach

By now, the cup contained only black-brown sludge, and critters had devoured whatever remained of the donuts. As he watched, one of them nibbled on a crumb

He derived some vicious satisfaction in squishing it, leaving behind a smear of black blood on the rim of the plate. If he had to suffer, so would everyone around him

Maybe, if he sits out here long enough, he’ll catch pneumonia, too. Maybe then he’ll finally be able to follow Patroclus over to the other world. Maybe then he would finally get to be happy

A hoarse voice cleared its throat right behind him. The man was wearing doctor’s scrubs, having just gotten off work. Achilles flinched. It seemed unfazed, “I’m sorry for your loss”

Achilles didn’t respond

Hector continued, “We did everything we could, but it was too late for him. All we could do was-“

“Shut up”, his voice was sharper then he remembered, hoarse and rusty from screaming, like shattered glass, “Shut up before I gouge out your eyes”

“I understand you’re upset”, Hector’s voice was placating. Achilles wanted to kill him, “but it’s not OUR fault”

“I thought I told you something”, his voice was dead, lifeless as his love, right under him, like all the nights they had spent together, “Let me repeat it - shut up”

“Right…”, Hector paused, before clearing his throat, “Briseis wants to know if you’re okay”

Achilles was silent. After a long moment, the tell-tale sounds of a man shuffling away reached him. He didn’t move

After a long moment, he rose to his feet. At the gates of the cemetery, Automedon, clearly worried, perked up slightly at the sight

“Boss”, he called, “The car’s waiting”

“Is…”, Achilles cleared his throat, “Is Mom…”

“She’s at the house”, he swallowed. Hard, “She wants to see you”

“I…”, the breath he drew in was ragged and torn, as he turned back towards the grave, feeling oddly like he was chopping off a limb by leaving this place, “I…”

His mother had never liked Patroclus. But these last few weeks… she had changed. For some reason, the thought of her son losing his heart seemed to get her to finally show the young - so young, too young - man some compassion.

Who knows ? Maybe she had a change of heart.

“Boss ?”, Automedon sounded a bit nervous. He idly scratched the back of his head, “Lady Thetis said she wants you inside by sundown, lest you…”, he swallowed, “…end up like him”

Achilles resisted the urge to bark out a pained laugh. Isn’t that what she always told him would. come of associating with the likes of his beloved ? A bastard, a disgrace, someone disowned by his own family ?

How odd that, now that he was dead, those words were repeated, and with such a different meaning

“Boss ?”

“Yeah”, Achilles turned towards his friend, and was a bit disappointed to not be faced with a funeral hearse, “M’coming”

It seemed improper, for a corpse to be carried around in his mother’s gleaming black Chevrolet Cameron, but he supposed after it had carried his mother around for years, it was used to carting around wounded souls

[longliveblackness]

While raising her children in Harlem, Hale developed a deep sympathy for abandoned and neglected children. In the 1940s, she began providing short-term and long-term care for community children in her home. She also found permanent homes for homeless children and taught parents essential parenting skills. In 1960, she became a licensed foster parent, providing care for hundreds of children in her home. Hale's success as a foster parent earned her the affectionate nickname of "Mother Hale."

In 1969, at the age of 64, Hale became the foster parent of an infant addicted to cocaine. She responded to needs of other children with this affliction by founding a groundbreaking foster care program in Harlem, Hale House. The respite care program also provided training to drug-addicted mothers on how to improve the health of their chemically dependent babies. Hale's unique program required mothers to live in Hale House with their children and attend a drug rehabilitation program. In the 1980s, Hale expanded Hale House services to include care for infants stricken with HIV and those who had lost parents to AIDS.

By 1991, Hale House cared for approximately 1,000 infants and toddlers. During her distinguished career, Hale received numerous honors and awards for her community service. She received an honorary doctorate from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and public service awards from the National Mother's Day Committee and the Truman Award for Public Service. In 1985, during his State of the Union Address, President Ronald Reagan referred to Hale as an "American hero" for her commitment to at-risk children.

Clara McBride Hale died on December 18, 1992 in New York City at the age of 87.

•••

Mientras criaba a sus hijos en Harlem, Hale desarrolló una profunda simpatía por los niños abandonados y descuidados. En la década de 1940, comenzó a brindar cuidados a corto y largo plazo a los niños de la comunidad. También encontró hogares permanentes para niños sin hogar y enseñó a los padres habilidades esenciales para la crianza de los hijos. En 1960, se convirtió en madre adoptiva autorizada y cuidó a cientos de niños en su hogar. El éxito de Hale como madre adoptiva hizo que se ganara el cariñoso apodo de "Madre Hale".

En 1969, a la edad de 64 años, Hale se convirtió en madre adoptiva de un niño adicto a la cocaína. Ella respondió a las necesidades de otros niños con este padecimiento y fundó un innovador programa de cuidados y crianza en Harlem, llamado Hale House. El programa de cuidados también proporcionó capacitación a madres drogadictas sobre cómo mejorar la salud de sus bebés químicamente dependientes. El programa único de Hale requería que las madres vivieran en Hale House con sus hijos y asistieran a un programa de rehabilitación de drogas. En la década de 1980, Hale amplió los servicios de Hale House para incluir la atención a bebés afectados por el VIH y a aquellos que habían perdido a sus padres a causa del SIDA.

En 1991, Hale House atendía a aproximadamente 1,000 bebés y niños pequeños. Durante su distinguida carrera, Hale recibió numerosos honores y premios por su servicio comunitario. Recibió un doctorado honorario por parte de John Jay College of Criminal Justice y premios de servicio público del Comité Nacional del Día de la Madre y el Premio Truman al Servicio Público. En 1985, durante su discurso sobre el estado de la Unión, el presidente Ronald Reagan se refirió a Hale como una "héroe estadounidense" por su compromiso con los niños en situación de riesgo.

Clara McBride Hale murió el 18 de diciembre de 1992 en la ciudad de Nueva York, a la edad de 87 años.

[mailmiocuoredipietratremaancora]

I’ve been dancing in queer discos for five years now and I never actually thought about why they always put a lot of 80s’ songs, and then tonight it clicked: it’s about a certain queer generation, it’s about the AIDS crisis, it’s about gaining visibility and freedom, it’s about Thatcher and Reagan, it’s about decriminalisation, it’s about not forgetting anything even if life’s really different right now

[reasonsforhope]

"Since it was first identified in 1983, HIV has infected more than 85 million people and caused some 40 million deaths worldwide.

While medication known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, can significantly reduce the risk of getting HIV, it has to be taken every day to be effective. A vaccine to provide lasting protection has eluded researchers for decades. Now, there may finally be a viable strategy for making one.

An experimental vaccine developed at Duke University triggered an elusive type of broadly neutralizing antibody in a small group of people enrolled in a 2019 clinical trial. The findings were published today [May 17, 2024] in the scientific journal Cell.

“This is one of the most pivotal studies in the HIV vaccine field to date,” says Glenda Gray, an HIV expert and the president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council, who was not involved in the study.

A few years ago, a team from Scripps Research and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) showed that it was possible to stimulate the precursor cells needed to make these rare antibodies in people. The Duke study goes a step further to generate these antibodies, albeit at low levels.

“This is a scientific feat and gives the field great hope that one can construct an HIV vaccine regimen that directs the immune response along a path that is required for protection,” Gray says.

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024. Article continues below.

Vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize a virus or other pathogen. They introduce something that looks like the virus—a piece of it, for example, or a weakened version of it—and by doing so, spur the body’s B cells into producing protective antibodies against it. Those antibodies stick around so that when a person later encounters the real virus, the immune system remembers and is poised to attack.

While researchers were able to produce Covid-19 vaccines in a matter of months, creating a vaccine against HIV has proven much more challenging. The problem is the unique nature of the virus. HIV mutates rapidly, meaning it can quickly outmaneuver immune defenses. It also integrates into the human genome within a few days of exposure, hiding out from the immune system.

“Parts of the virus look like our own cells, and we don’t like to make antibodies against our own selves,” says Barton Haynes, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and one of the authors on the paper.

The particular antibodies that researchers are interested in are known as broadly neutralizing antibodies, which can recognize and block different versions of the virus. Because of HIV’s shape-shifting nature, there are two main types of HIV and each has several strains. An effective vaccine will need to target many of them.

Some HIV-infected individuals generate broadly neutralizing antibodies, although it often takes years of living with HIV to do so, Haynes says. Even then, people don’t make enough of them to fight off the virus. These special antibodies are made by unusual B cells that are loaded with mutations they’ve acquired over time in reaction to the virus changing inside the body. “These are weird antibodies,” Haynes says. “The body doesn’t make them easily.”

Haynes and his colleagues aimed to speed up that process in healthy, HIV-negative people. Their vaccine uses synthetic molecules that mimic a part of HIV’s outer coat, or envelope, called the membrane proximal external region. This area remains stable even as the virus mutates. Antibodies against this region can block many circulating strains of HIV.

The trial enrolled 20 healthy participants who were HIV-negative. Of those, 15 people received two of four planned doses of the investigational vaccine, and five received three doses. The trial was halted when one participant experienced an allergic reaction that was not life-threatening. The team found that the reaction was likely due to an additive in the vaccine, which they plan to remove in future testing.

Still, they found that two doses of the vaccine were enough to induce low levels of broadly neutralizing antibodies within a few weeks. Notably, B cells seemed to remain in a state of development to allow them to continue acquiring mutations, so they could evolve along with the virus. Researchers tested the antibodies on HIV samples in the lab and found that they were able to neutralize between 15 and 35 percent of them.

Jeffrey Laurence, a scientific consultant at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, says the findings represent a step forward, but that challenges remain. “It outlines a path for vaccine development, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” he says.

For one, he says, a vaccine would need to generate antibody levels that are significantly higher and able to neutralize with greater efficacy. He also says a one-dose vaccine would be ideal. “If you’re ever going to have a vaccine that’s helpful to the world, you’re going to need one dose,” he says.

Targeting more regions of the virus envelope could produce a more robust response. Haynes says the next step is designing a vaccine with at least three components, all aimed at distinct regions of the virus. The goal is to guide the B cells to become much stronger neutralizers, Haynes says. “We’re going to move forward and build on what we have learned.”

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024

[placentaeater999]

Friends of the Placenta. I (Mr. Eater) have been working on something.

MINI PRINT SALE!!!

This year is my first time participating in AIDSWalk Los Angeles!

I'm raising money to support APLA Health in their mission to provide specialized lgbtq+ and HIV/AIDS care :)

I'm doing a 30 day mini print challenge for my art seminar, so to raise money, I've decided that I'll be selling my mini prints! They're 2$ each (plus shipping if needed) and I will make no profit off of them. Each day of my 30 day print challenge, I will be releasing a new design that you can buy here or on my Instagram account @ eel_teeth! All designs made during this challenge are eligible.

DM to purchase, or donate directly thru the link below!

We have 10/100$ so far, and here are my first four days of the challenge!

[genderoutlaws]

KISSING DOESN’T KILL: GREED AND INDIFFERENCE DO

“Gran Fury, a collective of artists and designers dedicated to promoting AIDS/HIV awareness, produced many inventive and thought-provoking posters. AIDS activists had used the strategy of the 'Kiss-In' - large public demonstrations of affection by gay and straight people - to undermine complacency and conservative commentators alike. This 1989 advertisement, designed for display on public transport in New York City and San Francisco, ridicules small-mindedness as well as reminding the authorities of their responsibilities in combating AIDS.”

[icemav86]

1980s safe sex posters

[x]

Part 1

[Part 2]