A January 22, 2006 article in The New York Times Magazine promoted the idea that gay men - not just HIV positive gay men - but all sexually-active gay men (among others) should be given an AIDS drug, on the assumption that doing so would stop AIDS. The drug in question is called Tenofovir (brand name Viread), which the writer, Jon Cohen, described as "a drug that appears safer than the other AIDS medications on the market1 ."

Cohen asked, "Could the sexually active take antiretrovirals [AIDS drugs] to avoid contracting H.I.V. in the first place?" The answer is: Some people are willing to find out.

Cohen reports that "a recent survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at Gay Pride events in four U.S. cities found that seven percent of those interviewed said they had tried it." The result? "A half-dozen studies are now under way that will determine whether these men are onto something."

This use of powerful AIDS drugs, in healthy young people who are neither HIV positive nor have AIDS, certainly needs a buzzworthy name to sell it, and it gets one: "PrEP!"—Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis. As in, Don't get HIV, get "PREP-ed!"

Andrew Sullivan, conservative, gay HIV-positive pundit, liked the idea, and wrote on his blog: "Why not put all HIV-negative men on a simple anti-retroviral regimen as a prophylaxis, rather than as a treatment?... My own view is that gay men, if the studies pan out, could and perhaps should embark on a proactive campaign to get as many sexually active men as possible on meds2 ."

Liam Scheff - writer on politics and culture, with a special focus on the abuses of big pharma on the american underclass. In 2004, I broke open the NIH clinical trial scandal - government researchers testing New York City orphans with combinations of toxic,...

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