Free Republic

HIV advocate Mackenzie Copley is making a big bet in Las Vegas—and he’s confident it’ll pay off. As founder and CEO of Shine, he’s launching a pilot program that offers financial incentives—$1,000 every six months—to folks living with HIV if they stick to their treatment regimen. The goal for participants is to reach and maintain an undetectable viral load. Doing so translates to better overall health, including longer lifespans and fewer opportunistic infections. Importantly, it also means they don’t transmit HIV to others through sex, a fact commonly referred to as Undetectable Equals Untransmittable (U=U).

<p>On Monday, a team of researchers led by doctors from the University of California at San Francisco announced that gay men were “many times more likely than others” to acquire a new strain of drug-resistant staphylococcus, a nasty, fast-spreading and potential lethal bacteria known as MRSA USA300. And sure enough, the study, published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was quickly picked up by reporters round the world and across the Internet, including a London tabloid which dubbed the disease “the new H.I.V.”</p>