Gus Cairns's blog

So I went to the Lancet session on prevention, and what a change from two years ago!

In Toronto 2006 the big buzz of the conference was prevention, but a specific kind of prevention, namely the New Prevention Technologies (NPTs). Oh yes! Bills Gates and Clinton were in full agreement. Let's pour shedloads of money into microbicide research and vaccines and, though it's a ‘challenge' because you always have to say that, one day we'll have a nice easy to use prevention method that will mean everyone's protected, or at least more than they are by Condoms and Being Faithful.  read more »

This year? Every single speaker, and we're talking about people like Peter Piot of UNAIDS and Tom Coates, one of the foremost NPT proponents in the world, stressed that there was "no magic bullet". HIV prevention had to be and would always have to be a combination phenomenon.

Prevention works – if you ask people what they want to prevent

So get this. The results of a randomised controlled trial of an HIV prevention method were presented  on Monday and they produced a 57% reduction in the risk of HIV infection.

So was this some study of circumcision in Africa or PrEP in Peru you’ve unaccountably missed? No. It was a behavior-change programme for gay men at the Boston Fenway HIV clinic and while it was too small to show differences in HIV incidence it produced dramatic cuts in the amount of risky sex guys were having.  read more »

The last thing I expected to be doing at the World AIDS Conference was standing on a stage at the Zocalo, the central square of Mexico City, making a speech about justice and HIV treatment access for gay men/MSM in the global South, and accepting a large banner from a group of rainbow-suited Mexican gay activists in front of a cheering crowd.

I’m a reporter, not a presenter, for godsake. Let alone a celeb (two reporters wanted to interview me). The way it happened was this.

I’m on the steering committee of the Global Forum for MSM and HIV, the folks who put on the pre-conference satellite meeting (in fact a miniconference of about 450 gay activists from around the world). The conference was a great success and afterwards we went on the march against homophobia and stigma, a rainbow-bedecked celebration of gayness and general non-family-oriented sexuality (the sex workers’ satellite attended too).  read more »