Betting on Sex

The behavioral paradigm, which claims that most HIV transmission in African countries is a result of unsafe heterosexual intercourse, is vitally important to the pharmaceutical companies competing to develop HIV drugs. Some HIV transmission is due to heterosexual intercourse, but it is not clear what proportion. Some transmission is also due to unsafe medical and cosmetic practices. But, according to those defending the orthodox view, sex is the problem and only a tiny proportion of the virus is transmitted through any non-sexual route.

Betting on the behavioral paradigm being true, the pharmaceutical industry has been working to widen their markets. They are not only targeting people who are HIV positive but also the far bigger, and more lucrative market, of those who are HIV negative. It is hoped that they can be scared into believing that they are vulnerable, and more to the point, that they need to take some form of drug to protect themselves.

Four of the main means of widening the market for HIV drugs are vaccines, microbicides, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and a strategy called 'treatment as prevention'. A maximum of about five million HIV positive people in the world are currently on antiretroviral drugs (ARV). But tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions could be potential customers for vaccines, microbicides and PrEP. Even just one of these could increase ARV consumption by tens or hundreds of times.

Treatment as prevention, testing everyone regularly and putting anyone found to be HIV positive on ARVs to reduce their transmission rate, would create a smaller market, but it could still be about ten times the current market.

To help out the pharmaceutical industry a bit more, because they are clearly struggling to make ends meet, there are two further phenomena. The first is the new WHO Guidelines on HIV treatment, which recommend putting HIV positive people on treatment at an earlier stage of disease progression. This could double the current market. The second is the enormous levels of ARV drug resistance that will inevitably develop as a result of all the previous considerations.

Vaccines, microbicides, PrEP and treatment as prevention are all predicated on the behavioral paradigm. While any treatment with ARV drugs may give some protection against any kind of HIV transmission, no one is going to vaccinate against something that they could catch from unsafe medical or cosmetic practices. They will just insist on safe medical or cosmetic practices. No one would put a topical microbicide on their genitals to protect themselves from accidental exposure to contaminated medical equipment during an operation. And people certainly won't be taking PrEP before going to the doctor, dentist, hairdresser or tattoo artist.

If a significant proportion of HIV transmission is as a result of unsafe medical or cosmetic practices, that would really cut into the markets that Big Pharma have been trying to secure for so long. The whole HIV industry and the hoards of academics, consultants, bureaucrats and countless others that work so hard to claim that sex is the problem would have to find other approaches to cutting transmission.

True, it would be far easier to cut transmission if a lot of it turned out to be non-sexual. But easier for whom? Topical microbicides and the like can't be used for much else aside from preventing sexually transmitted HIV. I'm sure there'll still be vast markets for HIV related pharmaceutical products. But without sex, will anyone even care any more? It's hard to imagine who will want to be involved in HIV prevention campaigns without the current emphasis on sex, whether they come from a moral, population control, religious, political, salacious, commercial or almost any other angle.

I don't wish to exaggerate, I'm sure sex plays a big part in HIV transmission. But the world needs to know just how big that part is. And that means investigating the part that non-sexual HIV transmission plays in high prevalence countries. Simply guessing, which is what UNAIDS currently do, is not good enough. People are entitled to know how HIV is being transmitted so that they can protect themselves and others.

The HIV industry, if it is ever to have an impact on the pandemic, also needs to know. They need to let Big Pharma fend for themselves, they'll probably be OK. But many people are being infected with HIV, suffering disease and stigma and passing the virus on to others because they don't know that they can be infected through non-sexual routes and so they don't know how to protect themselves. It's time for the industry to admit they got it wrong, that it's not all about sex, and to start doing something about it.