Developments in PrEP

Hello everyone,

I recently saw an article in the Washington Post discussing the results of a study done with a relatively new pre-exposure prophylaxis drug (PrEP) to prevent the spread of HIV. In this study, not a single person out of the 600 high-risk participants were found to have contracted the virus. This is potentially groundbreaking and in my opinion, should be receiving much more coverage than it's currently getting.

In my class about the AIDS epidemic, we have been discussing the possible ramifications of such a development. Some professionals remain concerned that this drug might implicitly sanction high-risk sexual behavior among adherents, such as unprotected male-male anal intercourse. Should this drug at some point become widespread, the onus will be on medical professionals to stress that this is a supplement rather than some sort of panacea, and that safe, healthy sexual practices are still as important as ever. However, it is also my concern that we might further a deeply entrenched system of socioeconomic disparity. Biomedical advancements are well and good, but they often only are able to benefit those who have the economic wherewithal to buy into them. Does this drug, which obviously is going to have somewhat prohibitive costs (even after insurance) have the potential to separate us further into a class of have and have-nots? In public health, professionals and social scientists often talk about the social determinants of health and disease. Although this is such a crucial advancement, I think it's worthy to note the possibility of a sort of social stratification of disease in the future. Will we actually see an increased gap in prevalence of the virus and AIDS among lower and upper classes simply as a result of the former not being able to afford it, while their middle- and upper-class counterparts see declines in rates of the very same infection? Unintended social consequences are something we must be cognizant of when we think of when crafting goods originally intended to better lives in another arena.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/09/04/in-new-study-hiv-prevention-pill-truvada-is-startlingly-100-percent-effective/