UGH VS. UGH: Michaels Weinstein & Lucas Fighting Over Truvada
Welcome to the battle of your two favorite Michaels, where picking a side is like choosing between eating glass or sitting on a chainsaw. In one corner, it’s the horrible AIDS Healthcare Foundation President and anti-porn crusader, Michael Weinstein. In the other, it’s hypocritical bareback porn producer and insane bigot Michael Lucas. They’re fighting over whether or not you should take HIV medication.
First up, Michael Weinstein was quoted in an AP story on Truvada:
“If something comes along that’s better than condoms, I’m all for it, but Truvada is not that,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “Let’s be honest: It’s a party drug.”
[…]
“There’s an element in the gay community that espouses ‘anything goes,’ that is for sexual freedom and not giving an inch,” he said. “But demonizing me or AHF isn’t going to shut us up.”
As many questions as I have about Truvada, everyone I know who’s on it takes their adherence to the medication very seriously. They aren’t partying. Furthermore, anyone willing to spend thousands of dollars on the drug probably isn’t going to buy it and then not use it properly. And for sero-discordant couples, Truvada is a great thing. What evidence does Michael Weinstein have that it’s a “party drug”? Not surprisingly, neither he nor the AP provide any examples or proof of people “partying” on Truvada.
Meanwhile, Michael Lucas took to Out.com to barf up a retort to the vomitous Weinstein:
[Truvada] is arguably the most important breakthrough in HIV medicine since the mid-1990s, when HIV was made no longer a death sentence, thanks to retro-antivirals and protease inhibitors. But each time a major news organization takes on this important subject, it calls upon one individual who’s on a crusade to snuff out PrEP: Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Yes, don’t you just hate it when a news organization keeps calling upon that same, one individual to talk about such an important subject?
It’s now time to [sic] for our community to fight back against his shame-on-us rhetoric. It’s time for us to fight back and say, “shame on him.” As the issue of cost of PrEP, and whether it should be deployed to prevent young people from becoming infected, becomes an important national issue, we need to take Mr. Weinstein and his radical rhetoric out of the national conversation. He needs to be removed from his post at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Immediately.
As everyone knows, Michael Lucas has cited the “miracle” of Truvada as influencing his own decision to produce and appear in his company’s bareback scenes, so a pro-Truvada article on the pages of a big-pharma friendly website (his second in less than a year) isn’t exactly courageous. And remember, Lucas only started singing the praises of Truvada after his company spent months trying to justify its switch to all-bareback by saying that their bareback scenes would be between “real life couples”—until they ran out of real life couples to shoot. So, anyone willing to let Michael Lucas dictate their safer sex practices should be prepared to change strategies at the drop of a dime, literally.
Now, after hearing both sides, are you able to form a better opinion on Truvada? Of the two people at the forefront of the “debate” over this potential advancement in HIV prevention, one is a dismissive, corporate drone who doesn’t want any advancement at all, and the other is a bareback porn producer trying to keep the lights on. Are you team Michael or are you team Michael?
