In an effort to combat stigma that has arisen around a treatment that prevents HIV, a San Francisco elected official announced publicly Wednesday that he is taking the medicine. City Supervisor Scott Wiener said that he is taking Truvada, an FDA-approved drug that dramatically reduces the risk of聽HIV infection. He appears to be first public official to make such an announcement.
Each morning, I take a pill called Truvada to protect me from becoming infected with HIV. This strategy, also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, reduces the risk of HIV infection by up to 99 percent if the pill is taken once a day. This makes PrEP one of the most effective HIV-prevention measures in existence. 鈥�
As an elected official, disclosing this personal health decision was a hard but necessary choice. After all these years, we still see enormous stigma, shame, and judgment around HIV, and around sexuality in general. That is precisely why I decided to be public about my choice: to contribute to a larger dialogue about our community鈥檚 health.
鈥淢y hope is that by disclosing my PrEP use publicly that I can help move the conversation forward and get more people thinking about PrEP as a possibility, and encouraging people to consult with their medical provider,鈥澛燱iener said聽in an interview at his office in San Francisco鈥檚 City Hall.
Truvada combines two different drugs into a single pill that, when taken daily, can reduce the risk of HIV infection by more than 90 percent. It was approved by the FDA in 2012. Both the 聽and the 聽recommend its use by people who are at high risk of HIV infection. Still, it is the subject of debate, especially within the gay community.
Wiener, 44, was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2011. He says聽he started coming聽out as a gay man in 1990, at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
鈥淐oming out in that environment was challenging and stressful,鈥� he said. 鈥淚mmediately associating sex with illness and death was very stressful, and many, many people, I think, had that same experience.鈥� He spoke of friends who have started using PrEP recently who 鈥渉ave told me that their general anxiety level around intimacy has gone down significantly.鈥�
Wiener said that only a few people had known that he was taking PrEP. James Loduca, vice president of philanthropy for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, called Wiener鈥檚 disclosure 鈥渋ncredibly courageous.鈥�
鈥淲e need more people like Supervisor Wiener,鈥� Loduca said. 鈥淚n my own personal network, many of my HIV-negative gay male friends are on PrEP. None of them talk about it publicly, and that is a reflection of the enormous stigma and shame that we still have around sex, around a desire to have intimacy. 鈥� It鈥檚 an important watershed moment for our community that someone so visible steps forward and says 鈥楶rEP is helping me.鈥欌��
Wiener spoke about the importance of employing聽all options to prevent acquiring the virus, including the use of condoms and being tested regularly. If someone becomes infected with HIV, identifying the infection sooner yields more immediate treatment, which has positive long-term health outcomes.
Wiener鈥檚 announcement comes on the eve of a rally to be held Thursday, coordinated聽by San Francisco Supervisor David Campos. Campos is calling for San Francisco to make PrEP available to San Franciscans regardless of income. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made a 聽for his state.
Nationally, there have been 50,000 new HIV infections every year for the last 20 years. 鈥淧rEP is the first new tool in our fight to protect ourselves from HIV since the epidemic began,鈥� Campos said in a release.
Wiener backs the effort. 鈥淚n order for PrEP to be successful, we have to do three things,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e need to raise awareness about it, make sure people know about it. 鈥� We need to secondly remove the stigma around it, so people are able to talk about it, are able to consider it, and finally, we need to expand access.鈥�
But that kind of community-wide campaign is exactly the wrong idea, some advocates say.
鈥淭o deploy (PrEP) as a community-wide preventive is a public health disaster in the making,鈥� said Ged Kenslea, spokesman for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a global advocacy group. He stressed the organization is not opposed to the use of PrEP on a case-by-case basis.
鈥淭he crucial problem is adherence to the medication,鈥� he said. He also pointed out that condoms are not only effective against protecting against HIV infection, but also against other sexually transmitted diseases 鈥渇or which PrEP does nothing.鈥� Kenslea said that he鈥檚 worried that people 鈥渟eem to be throwing condoms out the window.鈥�
Dr. Robert Grant with the UCSF Gladstone Institute that ultimately showed Truvada鈥檚 effectiveness as a preventive agent against HIV and has followed it since.
He said that there鈥檚 no link between 聽He also supports efforts to make PrEP available more widely and compared having a variety of tools to fight HIV with having a variety of methods of birth control available.
鈥淛ust like contraception,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e happy to have people using different methods. Same way with HIV. We have to have lots of different methods for people to use, so people can find one that鈥檚 attractive to them.鈥�
Grant said that in his research 鈥渨e have not seen anyone become infected who has taken PrEP daily or nearly daily.鈥�