Underworld

(There’s also PreP - Pre Exposure Prophylaxis, which is taking medication if you feel you are at risk of being exposed to HIV, whether through sexual partners or sharing injection needles)

There’s been a lot of progress in this. So long as you’re taking your medications (anti-retrovirals), it’s essentially become another chronic disease like diabetes or COPD etc. HIV patients nowadays are living into their 60s and 70s and are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease rather than opportunistic infections or AIDS defining illnesses. 

If the HIV viral load is undetectable, then your CD4 counts (your white cells that are affected by the virus) should normalise. Such that you’re no different to the general population when it comes to infection risk.

Yes, we should all still be precautious, but it’s no longer a death sentence. 

There are 2 replies to that tweet, by GEM @/Rozthecreator reading “the woman is hiv positive, she takes her meds which makes her count low, she can’t pass it off to her husband which makes her still able to live her normal life and reproduce. The stigmas of hiv has to stop, and as Blacks especially we have to educate each other.”

The next reply is by t a y l o r @/G14_Classified_, reading “people on this app talk about sex 24/7 but are completely ignorant when it comes to stds and how they can/can’t be contracted. Yikes”.

Dr. Carmel Harrington, the lead researcher for the study, was one of these parents. Her son unexpectedly and suddenly died as an infant 29 years ago. (...) Harrington explained what she was told about the cause of her child’s death. 

"Nobody could tell me. They just said it's a tragedy. But it was a tragedy that didn't sit well with my scientific brain.” 

Since then, she’s worked to find the cause of SIDS, both for herself and for the medical community as a whole. She went on to explain why this discovery is so important for parents whose babies suffered from SIDS. 

"These families can now live with the knowledge that this was not their fault," she said.