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Americans living with HIV who maintain an undetectable viral load can no longer be barred from enlisting in the U.S. Armed Services, a federal judge ruled this week, striking down the last remaining policy limiting enlistment for those with HIV. The ruling came in Wilkins v. Austin, which was filed against the Department of Defense November 2022 by the LGBTQ advocacy group Lambda Legal; Peter Perkowski, Esq.; Scott A. Schoettes, Esq.; and Winston & Strawn LLP.

An Italian man has simultaneously tested positive for monkeypox, HIV and COVID-19 after returning home from a holiday, according to a paper published in the Journal of Infection. The 36-year-old reported having intercourse with men without a condom during a five-day Spanish holiday from June 16 to 20. Nine days after his trip, he developed a fever, sore throat, fatigue and headache before testing positive for COVID-19 on July 2.

Right-wing critics have called Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the White House national monkeypox response deputy coordinator, a "Satanist" for having the pentagram tattoo on his chest. Some conservative commentators expressed their opinions about Daskalakis, who is openly gay, and criticized President Joe Biden for deciding in August to appoint him to the position. "Meet Demetre Daskalakis. Demetre was just appointed by Joe Biden to be the official White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator. Demetre proudly wears the official symbol of the Church of Satan: The Pentagram. Joe Biden appointed a Satanist to the White House," Newsmax host Benny Johnson tweeted...

To combat HIV transmission and improve access to care in Georgia, telemedicine provider MISTR has partnered with Walmart to offer free at-home HIV testing kits in seven Walmart stores, according to a MISTR news release. In 2022, the South accounted for 49% of new HIV cases in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Georgia has some of the worst HIV rates in the nation. By the end of 2022, there were 63,984 people living with HIV in Georgia, with 2,575 new diagnoses. In 2021, the Atlanta metro area had the third highest rate...

Gay men get HIV at higher rates than any other group in the United States, and there are many reasons for this. Biological factors dramatically increase a gay man's vulnerability to infection. Social, cultural, and economic factors—such as stigma, racism, homophobia, and high rates of poverty—further compound the risk. Regardless of the causes, securing access to testing, prevention, and PrEP to lower HIV transmission in this high-risk group remains a pressing issue. There are numerous free or low-cost confidential testing and treatment sites offered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services via their online testing locator.

Monkeypox is back, only this time it has a new variant that kills 10% of the people who get it. Currently, the disease is still in Africa, but that can change. For that reason, it’s time (again) that we talk about the problem of promiscuity among gay men, since they were monkeypox’s primary vector in 2022. One of the biggest topics in the 1980s was AIDS, a sexually transmitted disease killing gay men. It got them because of their lifestyle choices. Back in 1981, while I was in college, I worked as a secretary for two virologists who were on...

Eighteen people living with HIV in Indiana were arrested between 2001 and 2019 for donating plasma, though, thanks to effective screening methods, none of them posed a risk of transmitting the virus, found a new report by the Williams Institute. The Williams Institute is a research center focusing on law and public policy as they pertain to sexual orientation and gender identity; it is part of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. HIV criminalization refers to the use of unfair laws to target people with HIV—notably African-American, Latinos, LGBTQ people, and women—and punish them because of their...

It’s been six months since three Kansas City Chiefs fans were found dead in a friend’s backyard after gathering to watch their favorite football team play, but the victims’ families are apparently no closer to getting answers about the tragic incident. This week “the families of those three dead men have few answers, and they say their questions are being ignored,” local news outlet WDAF-TV reported. The frozen bodies of David Harrington, 37, Ricky Johnson, 38, and Clayton McGeeney, 36, were found Jan. 9 in the backyard of a home rented by their friend Jordan Willis. They had gathered at...

A federal appeals court on Friday found unconstitutional a key component of the Affordable Care Act that grants a health task force the effective authority to require that insurers both cover an array of preventive health interventions and screenings and refrain from imposing out-of-pocket costs for them. The lawsuit centered on the objections of a coalition of small businesses in Texas to the requirement that they cover a drug for HIV prevention, known as PrEP, in their employee health plans. The appeals court did not, however, overturn the related ACA pillar; the practical, immediate impacts of its ruling apply narrowly...

With a goal of reducing and tracking the stigmas that act as a barrier to HIV prevention, treatment and care—as well as a hindrance to better overall health outcomes—AIDSVu recently added a new online feature, the JHU Stigma Dashboard that offers visualized stigma-related data. Currently, the dashboard tracks sexual behavior stigma in Georgia, New York and Maryland. Specifically, it includes data on men who have sex with men in those states. Additional data and geographic areas will be added to the dashboard in future phases.

After letters to my senators and an American Thinker article, Why is the FDA Contaminating America’s Blood Supply? it is the United Kingdom that finally comes clean: Britain’s ‘day of shame’ as full scale of infected blood scandal revealed‘The result of this inquiry should shake our nation to its core. This should have been avoided. It was known these treatments were contaminated; warnings were ignored repeatedly. ‘Time and again people in positions of power and trust had the chance to stop the transmission of those infections. Time and again they failed to do so.’ Patients “died or suffered miserably” as...

VIDEOEvil Dr. Anthony Fauci was the villain of "Dallas Buyers Club" yet for some bizarre reason the star of that movie, Matthew McConaughey, years later sucked up to Fauci with an incredibly softball interview about COVID in August, 2020. McConaughey likes to portray himself as a politically independent thinker yet he carefully followed the liberal narrative while questioning Fauci. Keep in mind that it was Fauci's drug policies that McConaughey's screen character was angry about. Oh, and please don't tell me that the villain of the "Dallas Buyers Club" was not Fauci because the McConaughey character was railing against the...

A man from Ipswich caught up in the infected blood scandal tells us no amount of money will ever make up for the impact it's had on his - and his family's - life. Alan Burgess tells us he lost his health, friends and businesses after he was given blood infected with HIV whilst being treated for Haemophilia in 1985. A report into the scandal, which affected more than 30,000 people during the 1970s and 1980s, is due out next week.

The true scale of the number of medical trials using infected blood products on children in the 1970s and 80s has been revealed by documents seen by BBC News. They reveal a secret world of unsafe clinical testing involving children in the UK, as doctors placed research goals ahead of patients' needs. They continued for more than 15 years, involved hundreds of people, and infected most with hepatitis C and HIV. One surviving patient told the BBC he was treated like a "guinea pig". The trials involved children with blood clotting disorders, when families had often not consented to them...

An Air Force cadet and a Navy midshipman have won their lawsuit after being denied promotions for being HIV-positive. Former Navy midshipman Kevin Deese and former Air Force cadet John Doe (a pseudonym) filed the lawsuit against the Department of Defense in 2018 when they were denied commissions after graduating from their respective service academies simply because they are living with HIV. The settlement, announced Monday, will see that the two are commissioned as officers "in recognition of the status and military careers they qualified for and earned years ago," according to a Lambda Legal press release.

Recently, The New York Times called one of their little exposés of normal people with government jobs no one had ever heard of the “deep state” and then went on to say that those people and their jobs are “kind of awesome.” It is always enlightening when the incompetent media tries to use propaganda and fails spectacularly. It’s obvious that they never even consulted the official definition of the “deep state” — a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy — before...

— Unsanitary conditions resulted in infections in three people; investigation still ongoingFive cases of HIV infection associated with cosmetic platelet-rich plasma (PRP) microneedling, known as a "vampire facial," were linked to one spa in New Mexico, according to a report from CDC investigators. From 2018 to 2023, four former clients of the spa and one sexual partner of a client were diagnosed with HIV, reported Anna Behar, PhD, MPH, of the CDC, at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infectionsopens in a new tab or window. Although few in number, the cases are important because HIV transmission through cosmetic injection...

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is spending millions on encouraging “racially diverse trans women” in New Orleans to take PrEP, a HIV prevention medication. HHS pledged approximately $2 million to Public Health Foundation Enterprises, a public health nonprofit based in California now known as Heluna Health, to “develop, implement and measure the impact” of a social media campaign aimed at increasing the awareness of HIV-prevention medications among “trans women” in New Orleans, according to a federal grant listing. The goal of the program, which will include a year-long test run serving 200 “trans women,”, is to “adapt...

A trans-identified male residing in Canada who claims to be HIV positive and inserts progesterone rectally has been allegedly “breastfeeding” his child with the support of established medical clinics. Former men’s rights activist Murray Pearson, 52, who uses the name Margaret (Margie) Fancypants on social media, has been criticized after he shared an image of himself at a lactation clinic holding a young infant. The photo was first posted three months ago on Reddit community titled r/TransLater, a board dedicated to males who transition later in life. In a post titled, “Milk, baby, milk! MTF 52,” wherein Pearson appears ecstatic...

As scores lay injured in Florida hospitals after the Orlando shooting, potential donors inundated blood banks, offering what they could. For some, however, the hourslong wait ended in disappointment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has strict guidelines about who can donate blood; among those restricted are people who have had certain diseases, those who have traveled to certain countries and men who have slept with men, or as the FDA refers to them, MSM, within the past year.