A second hepatitis C antiviral—boceprevir—moves closer to approval

If you created a word cloud around Alvin Ailey, items sure to pop up would be “dance theater,” “Judith Jamison,” “Revelations,” “Duke Ellington,” “Scripps Award” and any number of superlatives that trailed the famed choreographer and dancer since the late 1950s to his death from AIDS-related complications on December 1, 1989, and beyond. Joining the Ailey stratosphere this year is “Fight HIV Your Way,” a contest that will give individuals a chance to express how they meet the challenges of living with HIV/AIDS. Thanks to a [...]

Directed by Alex Stockley and Tom Barry Firecracker Films/Staying Alive Campaign No videos, no VJs, and no celebrity headliners marked this year’s World AIDS Day, as MTV and its grantmaking Staying Alive Campaign decided to unplug itself for one hour from its normal sexy venues in an effort to abate harmful stereotypes and to encourage twenty-something hipsters to empower themselves by taking an enlightened approach to HIV. Producers feel that at-risk youth, by talking openly about the virus, self-policing their own sexual behaviors, and getting [...]

Media Exposure Surrounding Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Needs a Life-or-Death Reality Check.

Poetry by Timmothy J. Holt “You cry but harm nothing in yourself.” —Tony Kushner, Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika Those tears aren’t real they’re not from your well only borrowed and now returned like rain on a sunny day noticed but soon gone not even sufficient to nourish growth. Go ahead though, cry return what’s not yours we can use the water. Don’t pretend it’s grief don’t think you really know don’t tell me of sorrow don’t mention a word look elsewhere with your [...]

A New Exhibit Proves It Takes at Least Two to Play Hide and Seek by Chael Needle There’s a danger that “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” currently running at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., will become known as the exhibition whose hosting institution, the Smithsonian, censored a work by an artist who has come to have a major influence on how we understand AIDS. This happened on the eve of World AIDS Day. And that work is a four-minute video excerpt [...]

David Bowie sang that we can be heroes “just for one day,” but if he were writing about the volunteers profiled here he’d surely change the lyric to 365 days. From Rochester, New York, to Los Angeles, California, organizations depend on volunteers like these to keep services flowing from staff members to individual clients and the community at large. What strikes us about these profiles is that each one touches on the positive attitude of the organization’s volunteer—eagerness, compassion, gratitude, empathy, enthusiasm—as part of his [...]

Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren On paper, UNAIDS has some lofty aims—but are they really feasible? The 7/13/2010 Globe and Mail headline read, “10 MILLION HIV-AIDS DEATHS PREVENTABLE BY 2025, UN SAYS.” It was a demonstration of mindless media spin on the subject of AIDS—especially when international action is meant. And it also demonstrated the rosy fog that major media—and NGOs as well—like to create around on their AIDS pronouncements. Let’s start with the fact that the UK newspaper used the word “preventable,” whereas [...]

In an Effort to Prevent HCV, One Campaign Is Educating Youth on Body Art Risks by Larry Buhl In the U.S., an estimated thirty-six percent of people under thirty years-old have tattoos. During tattooing, the skin is punctured up to 150 times a second in order to inject color pigments, leaving the customer at risk for blood-borne diseases including HIV and hepatitis C (HCV). According to the CDC, major research studies have not shown HCV to be spread through licensed, commercial tattooing facilities. However, poor [...]

The Book of the Dead by Kgebetli Moele Kwela Books Kgebetli Moele is a South African novelist who has won several prizes. Not surprising, given his passionate prose. In this new novel, he’s clearly angry about the HIV pandemic so predominant in his country. Unfortunately he’s written a strange work: artful but so angry as to exclude the characters from compassion and the reader from full engagement. The first, quite readable part of the work traces the trajectories of Khutso and Pretty, who rise from [...]