A wild ride: Bob Leahy looks back at what’s happened since PositiveLite.com became the first Canadian organization to sign on to the Undetectable = Untransmittable (U = U) campaign
I don’t remember how I first heard about Bruce Richman but it was surely on social media. It was the summer of 2016. Bruce had started cropping up everywhere. He seemed charismatic, passionate, informed. I asked him for an interview. He obliged and we talked for an hour or so by phone. I posted the resulting interview on August 10, 2016 under the title “Bob Leahy talks to Bruce Richman, the man behind Undetectable = Uninfectious.” The same day we also published an editorial “PositiveLite.com endorses the Undetectable = Uninfectious message”; you can read that story here.
We were the first organization in Canada to sign on. It was at a time when almost every website you looked at told the inquisitive that people with HIV posed a risk to others, albeit a small one, even when their viral load was undetectable. The Swiss Statement, HPTN 052 and latterly PARTNER had come and gone, their science either dismissed, played down or even ignored. It was infuriating for those of us who believed a sea change had occurred, game-changing developments from the world of science that had virtually zero impact.
It felt like the system had failed us.
PositiveLite.com had long been a proponent of treatment as prevention (TasP) when it was being vilified by many in Canada outside of B.C. I saw the Prevention Access Campaign, originator of U = U, as the kind of progressive, science-savvy ally we had long looked for. In August last year, we signed on to what was then called the Undetectable = Uninfectious campaign; the name changed shortly thereafter to avoid the potentially stigmatizing suggestion that those NOT undetectable were in fact infectious.
Then began a difficult few months to convince others in Canada that U really did equal U. True, we had early successes like CPPN joining us. But we also rubbed up against organizations like Ontario’s GMSH who were in the process of finalizing a sexual health campaign that said yes, poz guys who are undetectable were indeed a risk. Meanwhile, our publisher at the time, John McCullagh, was instrumental in getting CATIE, arguably the most influential name in Canada, on board. That persuaded others, including GMSH. (They subsequently produced an exemplary U=U=friendly campaign.) But these were difficult times with one hard fought battle after another, here and in other corners of the globe.