Just over ten years ago one of the key figures in “gay health” in the UK appeared in a BBC documentary. The charitable organisation he worked for had produced a poster and the reporter asked why there was no mention of condoms. The man (who is openly HIV+ himself) defended the omission.
He went on to lead the organisation and condom use continued to fall in the UK. There were all sorts of reasons for that but one was the failure of organisations like this one to provide a lead.
Eventually the organisation, which had been around since the early 1990s, lost all its funding and had to sell its headquarters. It’s been suggested that funders didn’t like the message…
But no problem… The man left and is now Executive Director at another “gay health” organisation. This one seems to be mainly funded by drug companies, although you wouldn’t know that unless you looked at its annual accounts at the Charity Commission or Companies House. You might assume that the NHS funds it. But no…
As we saw with PrEP, we’ve reached the stage where many of these organisations and large parts of the gay media are in conflict with the NHS. On occasion we even see NHS-funded clinics, such as the one at Dean Street in London, speaking out against the Health Service. The sort of thing that perhaps only we gays can get away with, due to political correctnesss.
A tiny circle of mainly London-based gay men in the organisations and gay media are setting the agenda, plus a handful within the NHS itself. There’s a conflict between them and their personal lifestyle, and what other doctors and genuine medical experts believe is the best way forward for the 99.9% of other gay, bi and men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) nationwide. We believe that many within the NHS must secretly despise the PrEP fanatics and view them as a threat to public health in the UK.
When you read the latest news about super gonorrhea, and then consider what many of us know about the bareback antics of men who take PrEP, you don’t have to be Brain of Britain to see why NHS England stood firmly against a widespread roll out and in the end only allowed a very limited trial. We predict PrEP will never be made available widely in England because, by the time the current trial ends, drug resistant STIs will pose a major threat.
As they demanded PrEP and bashed the NHS, how often did you read an article, post or tweet in which the gay health professionals informed you about the imminent arrival of drug-resistant STIs (and they were known about then). Almost never… They kept it quiet because it didn’t fit their agenda.
Their agenda may not be the best for your needs or the most effective way to keep you safe personally. But they don’t care about that.
One of the most sinister aspects of the shrieking that surrounded the campaign for PrEP has been the undermining of condoms, with the suggestion that they are somehow unsafe and less effective than PrEP. The stats for the effectiveness of PrEP are all over the place and range from 48% to 99% and we have seen it said that condoms are only, say, 78% effective. Many of these figures are almost meaningless because they depend on so many different factors.
Sometimes, perfect PrEP-taking has been compared to flawed condom use. Which is highly dishonest.
The NHS states that “when used correctly every time you have sex” condoms are 98% effective at preventing pregnancy. That means out every 100 instances of sex, sperm will get through to an egg and fertilise it on two occasions.
Using a condom for contraception is a little bit different to using one to protect against HIV. Just one sperm is enough to fertilise an egg, whereas a quantity of the HIV virus in semen or blood must get through to infect someone with HIV. A sperm may get through a microscopic hole in a condom but it seems very unlikely that enough of the HIV virus would ever pass through.
This is why we say that in our opinion, when a condom is used correctly, the risk of contracting HIV is near zero. And remember, some 95% of gay men in the UK who are HIV+ are now undetectable for the virus and we’re assured can’t pass on the infection.
You can’t believe any gay man who claims to be undetectable for HIV. Nevertheless, overall, your chances of coming into contact with an infectious man are a fraction of what they were 25 years ago.
Back in the 1990s the health professionals were encouraging us to fuck a poz guy with a condom and not discriminate. Sound familiar? They said a condom would protect us against against HIV and in those days most weren’t “undetectable” for the virus. But now, in the push for PrEP, they make out that condoms are unreliable! Either they deliberately put us at risk 25 years ago or they are lying now. We say it’s the second. It shows how they can’t be trusted.
Condoms fail occasionally because men don’t put them on properly and don’t check them during sex. Having sex when drunk or in the dark can also introduce risks because you are less aware of what’s going on.
Based on our experience of using them for 35 years, condoms almost never “tear”. This seems to have been exaggerated massively in the frenzy to demand PrEP.
The top pulling out before he ejaculates and finishing off outside his partner makes things even safer because the bulk of his semen is never even inside the condom let alone his partner.
In contrast, the reason bareback sex has always been high risk for HIV transmission is because a large quantity of DNA material (semen) is literally “injected” inside the body of the passive partner. Similar to drug users sharing a needle when the virus is transmitted by blood left in the syringe and again injected.
Only a couple of cases where PrEP has failed have come to light so far. But we can expect many more because drug resistant HIV will, increasingly, become an issue.
When there’s a failure with a condom, it comes off or tears, in most cases it’s obvious what’s happened. This is a great advantage because it allows you to go to your nearest hospital and ask for a course of PEP — drugs that can be taken after possible exposure to HIV, to zap the virus.
The frightening thing about PrEP is that there’s no way of knowing it has failed, until you find out at your next routine HIV test. You’ll be told you’re HIV+, that it’s permanent and possibly you have a harder-to-treat strain of HIV that is resistant to PrEP which basically is one of the drugs that people who are HIV+ are given.
Not a great issue just yet. But how many PrEP failures will it take before gay men decide the risk is too high?
Many men who take PREP are bareback fetishists which increases the risk of infection by HIV and other STIs in several different ways. Whereas the condom user wants to avoid a “load” of semen inside the body, that’s the whole focus for the barebacker and often to the exclusion of other sexual activities. It “cums” with the hugely increased risk due to the quantity of HIV virus that can be transferred. Injected directly inside the body of the passive partner.
Barebackers are high risk for other STIs including the emerging strain of super gonorrhea. Despite the hype by the gay professionals that PrEP takers are “responsible” people, those who are fervent barebackers by definition tend to care less about their overall health and well-being.
By barebacking yourself you are meeting high-risk, reckless, unhealthy gay men. This is why we say you effectively fall off a cliff into a swamp of STIs when you bareback. To update the old TV gay phoneline ad — these are gay men you really DON’T want to “get to know better”.
Whether you like them or not condoms are the future. We may not be far away from a time when even oral sex without one is quite a risk due to “super gonorrhea”.
It’s the PrEP users and barebackers who will speed the spread of drug resistant gonorrhea and HIV in the next year or two, to the point where they then pose a significant threat to us all.
Above all we will have the people who have led the so-called “gay health” organisations for the last 15 years to thank for making this happen much sooner than needed, because they undermined condom use after fantastic take up in the UK in the 1980s and early 90s.
One thing you can be sure of. The current CEOs, PrEPsters and “activists”, some of whom are being feted with awards currently, will be nowhere to be seen when it all goes wrong. They’ll have taken early-retirement, sneaked off or be too busy nursing their own personal case of untreatable gonorrhea or HIV.
ALSO READ: How lies are being told about demand on the PrEP Impact Trial to demonise and pressurise the NHS.