The world's largest global HIV organization, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, has long been resistant to widespread use of pre-exposure prophylaxis, the daily dosage of a pill that can reduce the risk of HIV transmission by 99 percent.
Since the Food and Drug Administration approved Truvada (also prescribed to treat HIV) for preventive use in 2012, AHF has been wary of PrEP. The group's influential executive director, Michael Weinstein, infamously called Truvada a "party drug" while recommending that doctors and government officials push condoms as the preferred HIV prevention method. Weinstein has often said he doubts most users would adhere to a PrEP regimen.
While AHF supports PrEP for those with multiple partners and people resistant to condoms, it still has misgivings about the preventive strategy, as evidenced by a new ad campaign titled "PrEP: The Revolution That Didn't Happen."
The ads, which will appear in LGBT newspapers around the country beginning Sunday, blast the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's call for 1.2 million Americans to be on a PrEP regimen; the CDC calls on 492,000 gay and bisexual men to be on the drug, or 1 out of 4 gay and bi men. The ads claim the relatively small number of people currently on PrEP -- 21,000 -- means "patients down't want to take Truvada and doctors are not recommending it."
The group also cites the rising number of non-HIV STDs as cause for concern, which they believe are partly a result of the CDC abandoning prevention methods like condoms and cutting budgets for testing and outreach. See the full advertisement below.
