You are going to read this story and think it is too outrageous to be true. You would be wrong. And, especially if you are an HIV advocate attending AIDS Watch in Washington, DC, this week, you must demand that our elected officials answer for it. Here’s the story, and some simple questions for [...]
Mark S. King (I DISAVOW THIS EDITORIAL ENTIRELY, DUE TO THE UNDUE INFLUENCE OF GILEAD PHARMACEUTICALS ON THE EDITORIAL PROCESS. YOU CAN READ MY STORY ABOUT THIS HERE. This Op-Ed appeared in The Washington Blade on February 22, 2019.) When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1985, there were no medications to treat [...]
Meeting of Trump's team to end HIV on Feb 6, 2019. (Photo: Carl Schmid) Today is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, so let’s hear it for the Trump USA team behind his master race plan to end the HIV epidemic by 2030. I’ve even included an actual photo of their meeting on January [...]
A protest against AIDS2020 being held in San Francisco. (Sean Black for A&U) The breaking point has been reached. After months of activism that has failed to convince the International AIDS Society (IAS) to withdraw their “AIDS2020” conference from San Francisco, activists have now announced an alternative conference, “HIV2020,” to be held in [...]
“A Trump appointee walks into an AIDS conference” sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke, doesn’t it? Just wait until you hear the punchline. It’ll kill you. The sight of the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar standing before more than 4,000 public health and community-based providers of HIV services is shocking [...]
Original ACT UP activists Mark Harrington, Peter Staley, Gregg Gonsalves, and Ann Northrup at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on October 11, 2018. The AIDS activists who regularly stormed the homes, offices and even churches of the powerful beginning in the late 1980’s weren’t the only ones who were scared [...]
Very little happens by accident. The most iconic moments in HIV/AIDS activism – the appearance of the early SILENCE=DEATH meme, the footage of AIDS activist Peter Staley being peeled from a building during a protest, the photos of Sen. Jesse Helms’ home wrapped in an enormous condom – were the product of weeks of careful [...]
It is every bit as absurd as it sounds. The International AIDS Society (IAS) plans to hold their global AIDS2020 conference in San Francisco – an insanely expensive and privileged city located in a country that has become dangerously inhospitable to the very populations the IAS claims to serve. Thank goodness for a growing army [...]
Attendees at the "OUT WITH IT" pre-conference of AIDS2018 in Amsterdam. One of the great joys of my HIV/AIDS writing and video blogging over the years has been capturing the sights, sounds, and incredible people of the International AIDS Society’s (IAS) biannual conference. I’ve spent sleepless nights in hotel rooms everywhere from Vienna [...]
Kevin Mack speaks to supporters in Potomac, Maryland The garden party fundraising event last month in Montgomery County, Maryland, had all the usual markers of a political candidate on the rise. Well-dressed children frolicked on the lawn of the stately home while guests helped themselves to finger foods and glasses of wine. Several [...]
