Terry Michael [ 54 min 01 s | 123.62 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (644)

Is there a pill to prevent “HIV”? Is Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) the answer we’ve been looking for, all these years? Your intrepid team here at “How Positive Are You” is on the case, with Washington, D.C., journalist Terry Michael. Unlike other gay pundits and “leaders,” Michael has read the studies, done the math — and documented the corruption [report updated November 22, 2014] at the highest levels of U.S. corporations and government. So, after hitting the books, he told HPAY co-hosts David Crowe and Elizabeth Ely what he found. You decide.

How Positive Are You last visited the idea of preventing HIV with drugs in Episode 21 with Edmond McNack, a former sheriff’s deputy. McNack took 10 months of so-called Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) after suffering a bite by a prisoner and was, well, not so “peppy” about the experience. We’re not so upbeat about PrEP, either. Nonetheless, please write and tell us which of the documented side effects of Truvada are acceptable to you. We’d also like to know your experiences on Truvada, good and bad; send them to us and we’ll read them on the air in an upcoming Episode.

Michael references the book Our Daily Meds and ProPublica’s “Dollars for Docs” guide to drug company payoffs to doctors. Is your doctor on this list? We note that “recommendations” and “federal guidelines” for HIV treatments have a way of becoming legal requirements, so your doctor might as well comply.

Meanwhile, a “debate,” if you want to call it that, snoozes on in pages such as:

New York Magazine, hyping PrEP through its reporter’s inexplicable ability to know exactly what’s going on in the “collective gay-male head.”
The New York Times, which at least dedicated some space to some mild skeptics, surprisingly enough, including playwright and ACT UP founder Larry Kramer.
A cheerleading collection of articles that never question that “99% effective” claim is at Andrew Sullivan’s “The Dish“ blog. (We’ve invited Sullivan to appear on HPAY, by the way. We hear he likes “debates.” We like “interviews.”)
Sullivan and Kramer’s lame, boring, fact-deficient smackdown on Truvada begins with Kramer in The New York Times getting white-glove slapped by Sullivan on “Out.”

For the grownups, Michael’s article about the corruption behind PrEP is available here — just in case it all went by too fast on audio.

Terry Michael is the executive director of the Washington Center for Politics & Journalism (WCP&J), offering The Politics & Journalism Semester for college students since 1989. After beginning a career in newspaper journalism in 1969, he became political press secretary to several Democratic U.S. Congressmen and Senators from 1973 to 1988. He has been a presidential primary campaign spokesman, including directing communications for the 1987-88 Paul Simon presidential campaign. Michael is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, including the 2001 Distinguished Service Award of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the 2002 Presidential Award of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. He has been an adjunct and guest lecturer on media and politics both home and abroad. A former press secretary for the Democratic Party, he now identifies himself as a libertarian Democrat. He is a gay man of the first liberated generation.

UPDATE, November 22, 2014: We will be posting soon our interview with Michael covering the 30-year rein of Dr. Fauci at NIAID, as Episode 92.