Studies have proven that having an undetectable viral load means you can’t transmit HIV-and people are finally waking up.
This May, Hans Berlin, an HIV-positive gay porn star, gave an acceptance speech at the Grabbys, an annual awards show for the gay-porn industry. Hans was accepting an award for best threeway for a scene from Skins 1 (link NSFW), a bareback flick. This marked the first year (also NSFW) that bareback studios were nominated in the award show’s history.
“We’ve come a long way, if you think about it. Thanks to PrEP and treatment as prevention®, it is safe to show condomless scenes,” Berlin told the audience, referring to methods for preventing transmission among those who are HIV-negative and HIV-positive, respectively. “For HIV positive performers like myself, there’s still a lot of studios that I cannot work for because our studios are testing for the virus and not for viral load… We have to get the message out. ‘U equals U’: Undetectable equals untransmittable. The science is clear about that.”
Despite how clear the science is, the message is still in the process of catching on-and for everything modern medicine has done to make HIV serodiscordant sex safe, stigma against HIV-positive people remains high.