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Positive Nation leaders
Will resistance come to Africa? PN came out early against the use of nevirapine monotherapy to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV. I wrote it because I think the only reason I'm alive today is because I stopped taking AZT monotherapy in the early 90s, so don't have mountainous NRTI drug resistance. The Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa sent us an angry letter asking if we were on the side of the 'Aids denialists', but sorry guys, we were right.
How we have failed gay men This time it was the Terrence Higgins Trust who sent us the angry letters. This urged the development of prevention means other than condoms - for gay men as well as poor women. See be PREPared for one of those means.
AIDS and war - the bottom line I wanted to protest at the appalling folly and waste of the Iraq adventure without bleeding-heart journalism of the Robert Fisk variety or tyrant-excusing pacificm. I thought, let's write about what this all costs. Trillions, was the answer.
Cheap AIDS drugs for the first world now! More about money - this time saying that the cost of anti-retrovirals is unsustainable everywhere, not just in the developing world.
What about the workers? This one was widely misunderstood. It wasn't criticising the THT's campaign against HIV testing for asylum seekers. It was an attempt to reframe the HIV and immigration debate by writing about the HIV positive people of the world not as victims, à la Guardian, but as us, as the resourceful, courageous and industrious people we are. As assets to the countries housing them, not human-rights cases. Some of the most impressive personalities I've ever met are HIV positive asylum seekers.
The haves and have-nots of HIV The last leader I wrote for PN. Sometimes I think people like me who are doing well on treatments forget how fragile the economic prosperity and socialised healthcare we enjoy in the EU might be. You don't have to go to Africa to find poor people dying for lack of drugs. More on this in The Price of Life.