An HIV-negative writer asks: Why does resistance still persist against the “Undetectable = Untransmittable” message?
By Mathew Rodriguez Poz Magazine
A recent study confirms that fear of HIV continues to trump scientific knowledge of the virus.
According to a recent study in the Journal of the International AIDS Society, a disturbingly high amount of HIV-negative gay men doubt the veracity of the statement “Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U).” If you haven’t heard that motto before, it’s pretty simple. People living with HIV who are on medication and whose viral loads have reached undetectable status cannot transmit the virus to their sexual partners.
The motto arose after the PARTNER study showed in 2016 that, among over 1,100 mixed-status couples who had condomless sex, not one HIV-negative partner acquired HIV from their HIV-positive partner.
The 2018 study on U=U ended up recruiting 12,222 eligible gay and bisexual men to share how they really felt about the slogan, which is gaining consensus among the medical and scientific communities, though that consensus has not extended to the general population. The men recruited were asked to give four possible answers on how accurate they believe the slogan to be: completely accurate, somewhat accurate, somewhat inaccurate and completely inaccurate. (continued)
