My Fabulous Disease has been honored by NLGJA, the national LBTQ journalist association, with its 2026 “Excellence in Blogging” award. It previously won the award in its inaugural year, 2014, as well as in 2016 and 2020.

The NLGJA awards its blog honor for a specific posting. This year, the posting which won the award was “Exposed Document Links HIV Leaders to ‘Betrayal of People Living with HIV.’”

It was an awful, heartbreaking, and infuriating article to write. It named names and called people out. Specifically, the article outlined the manner in which prominent HIV leaders signed on to a document as part of a lawsuit connected to Gilead Pharmaceuticals that was arguably not in the best interest of people living with HIV.

The piece took weeks to write and research. Doors were closed in my face, from advocates and allies who disappointed me in their reticence to go “on the record” about the document and the damage to our community.

Frankly, I don’t believe there are other writers who would have written it, or outlets that would have published it (POZ Magazine did post it as part of my blog on their site). Too much is at stake, including the potential loss of funding from Big Pharma (and their fury). So people kept their mouths shut. Fortunately, several did not, and I quote them in the piece. I also name the individuals who signed the horrible document, and get some of them to try and explain themselves. It did not go well for them.

I do not take advertising or sponsorships on this site. It keeps me honest and it allows me to speak freely. Too many people cannot. My Fabulous Disease is truly a labor of love and a sometimes expensive one. My writing is my contribution and an ongoing dialogue between myself and our own history as an HIV community.

I take a great deal of pride in that, and in the trust that you, my readers, have placed in my words.

I will keep on writing.

Mark