Is the end of AIDS in sight?
As a gay man well into middle age, whenever I get somewhat depressed about the state of human affairs, I think about the incredible improvements in AIDS treatment and prevention and I feel a little better.<p>It&#x27;s hard for people who didn&#x27;t live through it to really understand what a terrifying time the 80s and 90s were. First off, the general message of sexual education was pretty much &quot;If you have sex, it&#x27;s probably going to kill you.&quot; There&#x27;s some hyperbole there, but not much. There was really no such thing as &quot;sex-positive messaging&quot;, and even many years later it took me time to realize how much I had internalized &quot;sex is a bad, dangerous thing&quot;. More importantly, though, is that an HIV diagnosis really was seen as a death sentence. If you&#x27;re in your 20s, imagine a situation where tons of your friends had died, and there was an ever-present fear that you might be next. I honestly believe everyone who lived through that time in that situation has some level of PTSD.<p>So yes, there is still a lot to do as this article points out, but it is really amazing to see how far we&#x27;ve come. Even a lot of the issues pointed out in the article had less to do with technology and (honestly to my surprise) economic access than with shitty cultural practices (e.g. overall misogyny and men refusing to get tested). It&#x27;s important to not lose vigilance, but I think it&#x27;s also important to indulge in a moment of gratitude every now and then to all the warriors (both in the medical and research fields, and the many patients who lost their lives) who have accomplished so much for all of humanity.