Experts Unambiguously Opposed to Saying the Wrong Thing

Apologies for the lack of posting this year but I have had enough work keeping my other blog going. The subject of PrEP and related issues do also crop up there, though.

Daily use of Truvada has been backed for pre-exposure prophylaxis use by a panel of 'experts', which generally refers to people who are so well paid to say the right thing that no one else will disagree with them. It's likely that this use of the drug will soon be approved by the FDA. I wasn't able to find a register of the 'experts'' interests but I'm sure it would make interesting reading.

If approved, the drug will be prescribed for HIV negative people who are thought to be at high risk of being infected sexually, which generally refers to men who have sex with men in Western countries. The drug is not being considered for use by intravenous drug users. It is also unlikely to be of much value for commercial sex workers in wealthy countries as they are rarely infected unless they are also intravenous drug users or face other serious risks.

This suggests that PrEP is unlikely to be effective in high HIV prevalence developing countries, where high risk groups are not easy to identify. In many African countries, the bulk of infections among adults occur in married people and those in long term relationships, who don't face very high sexual risks. In other words, the drug is of little use as PrEP where it is most needed. But I'm sure that won't stop Big Pharma from lobbying the right people so that the potential tens or hundreds of millions of Africans can be exploited.

The process of palming off useless but extremely expensive drugs with potentially dangerous side-effects on Africans has been eased by years of publicity for the dominant HIV transmission paradigm, which says that almost all HIV in African countries is transmitted through heterosexual behavior. The fact that the paradigm is seriously challenged by empirical data has done little to influence policy, which concentrates on the politician, religious leader and media friendly process of wagging fingers, pointing fingers and poking fingers into the many HIV fuding pies.

Opposition from groups who claim to represent the interests of HIV positive people has almost all been taken care of in the time honored fashion of paying off anyone who speaks out of turn (or rubbishing anyone who won't take payment). A rare voice of dissent comes from the Aids Healthcare Foundation, which has consistently opposed the current trend of rushing into practices which have little empirical backing, but which mysteriously receive full backing from 'experts'.

Pharmaceutical front group Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC), predictably, blow the trumpet for PrEP; pharmaceutical products ostensibly produced to treat illness would never have become as profitable if they were only used by sick people. But the UK's Nick Partridge puts his finger on the problem, probably inadvertently: "But we need to know if people at highest risk of infection are prepared to take a pill every day and whether there would be an increase in risk-taking behaviour which could outweigh the prevention effectiveness of Truvada."

The truth is, we don't know who is at highest risk in high prevalence countries, we know that most will not take the pill every day and it's very likely there will be an increase in risk-taking behavior, especially where people opt for PrEP because they know (or even think) they are at risk.


[For more about non-sexual HIV transmission and male circumcision, see the Don't Get Stuck With HIV site.]