Michael Weinstein, AHF President, Stands By Truvada ‘Party Drug’ Comment

(Photo of Michael Weinstein found at AIDShealth.org)
AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein is standing by controversial remarks made regarding Truvada that have outraged many AIDS …

By Brenden Shucart

April 18, 2014 :: 10:00 PM

(Photo of Michael Weinstein found at AIDShealth.org)

AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein is standing by controversial remarks made regarding Truvada that have outraged many AIDS activists and medical professionals and sparked a petition demanding his resignation initiated by Mr. Los Angeles Leather, Eric Paul Leue. Truvada is the AIDS medication that has been approved by the FDA for use as a Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), which has been shown to be more than 90% effective at preventing HIV transmission in HIV-negative individuals when taken daily.

In an interview with Buzzfeed, Weinstein doubles down on comments made in a recent AP article decrying Truvada as “a party drug,” and lays blame for the controversy that has sprung up in their wake at the feet of the “bareback porn industry,” telling Buzzfeed:

In the last few days in terms of the people who have been yelling the loudest about this, they’ve all been associated with bareback porn. They’re all associated with bareback porn, which kind of makes my point that it’s a party drug.

And while it is true that gay porn mogul Michael Lucas was one of the first to call for Weinstein’s resignation, Weinstein’s detractors are not limited to the porn industry. Andrew Sullivan, an influential writer and former editor of The New Republic—who also happens to be living with HIV—responded to Weinstein’s “party drug” comment on his popular blog, The Dish:

I have to say I’m aghast by that attempt to stigmatize – yes, stigmatize – a medication that could prevent countless men from being infected with HIV. Think about it: if it were 1990 and the news emerged that – just by taking one pill a day – you could avoid ever getting infected with HIV, do you think there would be any debate at all?

But many of Weinstein’s most passionate critics are doctors and other health care workers who have devoted their lives to fighting against HIV/AIDS and improving the lives of those afflicted with the disease. Among them, Jim Pickett, director of Prevention Advocacy and Gay Men’s Health at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, who told Buzzfeed:

Comments like that of Michael Weinstein really devalue and diminish decades of research and the opinions of experts the world over that would very much disagree with his characterization. The idea that [Truvada] is simply some party drug on par with crystal meth or ecstasy is really ridiculous and insulting.

Another prominent medical professional taking issue with Weinstein’s stigmatizing comments about Truvada and those taking Truvada is Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, medical director of the ambulatory HIV program at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and board member of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, one of the nation’s most well regarded HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and advocacy organizations. Dr. Daskalakis told Buzzfeed, “I don’t see it as a party drug at all. The guys I’m giving Truvada to—and some women—have a lot of good reasons to take it. If being in a sexual relationship with someone who is HIV-positive is a party, then Truvada is a party drug.”

Weinstein has previously acknowledged that “when a person takes Truvada when they are supposed to, and they take it every day, then their chance of becoming infected with HIV is close to zero.” but that he feels that “it will be impossible to get people to adhere.”

He told Buzzfeed:

The primary issue with Truvada is that in the perfect world if people took it every day they would be protected, but that is not the case. I read over and over again articles talking about how it’s more than 90% effective and they don’t even mention the adherence issue. PrEP is just not 90%-plus effective in the real world. It’s just not ready for prime time as a public health strategy.

There are additional concerns of cost, which can run as high as $13,000 per year—though PrEP is now covered by state Medicaids and many insurance companies. PrEP also does not protect against any STDs besides HIV.

As this debate rages on, many of the nation’s other prominent AIDS service organizations have chosen to embrace Truvada as a tool for keeping at-risk individuals HIV-negative, three of which—AIDS Project Los Angeles, the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center and Project Inform in San Francisco—issued a joint statement today, applauding California’s Medi-Cal program for easing access to Truvada, which they refer to as “a well-established AIDS medication that has been proven to prevent HIV infection in at risk individuals.”