POZ

The June issue of POZ magazine is now online! Featuring: Mark S. King’s “The Sound of Stigma”, A Journey with Visual AIDS, HIV vaccination trials, Treatment updates & more.

To check it out, click here.

Need to talk to someone? Have questions? Want to get active in the community?

Visit our community forums.

The April/May Issue of POZ is out online!

Featuring: Overcoming substance abuse with HIV, Navigating Treatment as Prevention, & more.

nprglobalhealth:

The Beginning Of The End For HIV?

George Hitchings and Gertrude Elion worked together for 30 years designing new drugs and chemotherapies, including work that lead to the development of AZT, the first major medicine for treating HIV/AIDS.

Now 50 years later, two studies published in the journal Science demonstrate that treating HIV-positive patients with anti-retroviral drugs actually stops the spread of the virus throughout a community — and increases the overall life expectancy.

In other words, getting people on HIV drugs lifts up an entire community and is a promising strategy for wiping out the virus entirely.

NPR’s Jason Beaubien explains what the studies found and why they’re so important for public health.

Image from the Wellcome Library, London

 

 

 

To read more on HIV treatment news, click here.

Bills Introduced in Congress Would Change U.S. Marijuana Laws

New legislation aims at allowing the federal government to regulate marijuana similarly to alcohol in the US and proposing taxes on marijuana-related businesses.

http://www.poz.com/articles/marijuana_congress_1_23471.shtml

Coming Out Again and Again

October 11 is National Coming Out Day. The first person I ever told I was gay was my best friend in high school in 1987. I didn’t tell my parents I was gay until 1996. That same friend was the first person I told I was HIV positive in 1992. I didn’t tell my parents I had HIV until 2008. On this National Coming Out Day, I do have one more “coming out” story to share with you all…

An Exciting New Chapter!

Former POZ editor-in-chief Regan Hofmann shares news about her next step. She remains deeply committed to doing what she can to help usher in what science tells us is possible: an AIDS-free generation and, perhaps, even the end of the pandemic itself.

Oriol Gutierrez Named Editor-in-Chief of POZ

He becomes the first openly HIV-positive, gay Latino to helm the brand

Smart + Strong has named Oriol R. Gutierrez Jr. to editor-in-chief of POZ magazine and POZ.com, the leading HIV/AIDS resources in the United States. He had been deputy editor since 2008. He succeeds Regan Hofmann, who after nearly seven years as editor-in-chief, has started a new career as a consultant focused on strategy, communications and change in the field of global health.

Full-Court Press on HIV Criminal Laws

Scott A. Schoettes is the HIV project director for Lambda Legal, an organization that has been a longtime legal champion of HIV-positive people and LGBT civil rights. In his work for the organization, he recently filed a brief in The People of the State of New York v. David Plunkett an HIV criminalization case heard by the New York Court of Appeals, which is the highest court in the state.

The case involved David Plunkett, who was charged in 2006 with aggravated assault on a police officer—a felony premised on the use of a “dangerous instrument.” He bit a policeman who was trying to arrest him after an outburst at his doctor’s office. Plunkett eventually pleaded guilty to all the charges against him but reserved the right to appeal the aggravated assault charge. Click here to read more.

We Can End AIDS March Converges on White House

Coinciding with the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012), a mass of approximately 1,000 demonstrators under the banner of the We Can End AIDS Coalition crisscrossed Washington, DC, on July 24, ultimately converging on the White House to demand major changes to domestic and international HIV policy. Click here for more.