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Comment by throwaway123099 | Hacker News Reader

Can confirm. My eldest brother died of it via a blood transfusion. This was during the early days when it was little understood and all treatment was experimental.

The "popular" assumption was that catching it proved you were gay and highly promiscuous, or sharing heroin needles, therefore deserved it. Some of my brother's friends never spoke to him again from the moment of finding out. I think he found other's reactions as hard to deal with as the death sentence.

Mother did her utmost to never mention, and made me promise to always say he had cancer.

That bigotry still exists, and is far too common, as seen in some of this thread's comments.

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One concern I have is the resurgence of other STDs as a result of curing HIV. The number of sexual partners adults have has been steadily rising and risky so transmission of other "regular" uncurable STDs like HPV and Herpes may spike.

Shouldn't you then question if treating syphilis with penicillin encourages risky habits? Or be concerned about the condom and contraceptive pill? People are always going to want to have sex. Safe sex and condoms aren't foolproof. People get drunk or horny.

The trouble with that apparently innocent concern over the increased risk of other STDs, is the victim blaming it leads to. "Well if only they'd not taken risks", eventually becomes "it's your own fault" and "you shouldn't wear a short skirt".

It was well over a year after my brother died that his widow got the letter admitting liability from the hospital. Until then, I have no doubt that of those who knew he was HIV+ (and that she wasn't) more than a few had doubts. That he had obviously been unfaithful, or was gay and in denial, and had brought it on himself, maybe even deserved it etc. Along with all the extremes of not wanting to breathe the same air, touch, catch it from a seat sat in an hour ago or visit such a dangerous hospital ward.

It was ugly, undeserved and whether gay or not, the popular mood was more of the dark ages than the 20th century. We haven't evolved as far as we like to think.

Safe sex practices have seen a decline in recent years but condoms don't prevent HPV or Herpes Simplex so even people who consistently use condoms because they're concerned about HIV are still risking exposure to HPV & HSV.

People also had the same concern about birth control pills but the social benefits of the pill[1] far outweigh any potential social costs from (alleged) "riskier" behavior. And considering 80% of adults already have HPV and more than 50% carry HSV I think you're concern is largely unwarranted.

[1]https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/so... [PDF]

Do you have the same concerns about curing smallpox?

They've still not had peer review of their work, but this does seem promising:

https://71republic.com/2019/02/13/mexican-scientists-cure-hp...

>The number of sexual partners adults have has been steadily rising

Got a cite for that? I was under the impression the opposite was true.

And even if it is the case, see the book "More Sex is Safer Sex" by Steven Landsburg:

"You’ve read elsewhere about the sin of promiscuity. Let me tell you about the sin of self-restraint.

Suppose you walk into a bar and find four potential sex partners. Two are highly promiscuous; the others venture out only once a year. The promiscuous ones are, of course, more likely to be HIV-positive. That gives you a 50-50 chance of finding a relatively safe match.

But suppose all once-a-year revelers could be transformed into twice-a-year revelers. Then, on any given night, you’d run into twice as many of them. Those two promiscuous bar patrons would be outnumbered by four of their more cautious rivals. Your odds of a relatively safe match just went up from 50-50 to four out of six."

https://slate.com/culture/1996/07/more-sex-is-safer-sex.html

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