“Betrayed by our advocates”—post by Hank Trout on Truvada

Some “HIV” advocates have endorsed Gilead, sparking infighting in the “HIV” community

It may have taken some time, but it seems that the gay community has finally become aware of the Truvada disaster. The following article by long term “HIV” survivor Hank Trout appeared January 22, 2024 in the Bay Area Reporter. Much of what is reported is not new to us; however, read on and you will see that there has recently been a very disturbing development in this lawsuit, involving the very AIDS advocates that are meant to protect patients. Sound familiar? Here is the piece and some brief background.

Guest Opinion: Betrayed by our advocates

This piece really is incredible, and incredibly disturbing. I would like to point out that both Trout and King are enthusiastic advocates of the HIV AIDS story; King himself attacked my book on his blog, so he is certainly no fan of mine. Let’s dive in. All emphasis is mine.

Mark S. King's January 10 blog post on his award-winning "My Fabulous Disease" site made me aware of a new, and troubling, development in the class action lawsuit against pharmaceutical behemoth Gilead Sciences Inc.

Mr. King’s piece is interesting, as well. To avoid confusion, I will only use block quotes for the Trout piece; any quotes from King’s site will just be in scare quotes. King states: “Once upon a time, Gilead introduced a very successful HIV treatment drug, a compound known as TDF. Let’s call it “the original drug.” It was widely used by patients but had some troublesome side effects, like kidney damage and osteoporosis, especially when used with booster regimens (a booster is a drug that helps the other medications stay in your body longer).”

I usually call TDF “bad Truvada” and not “the original drug.” King moves on to discuss the fact that Gilead held back “good Truvada” (TAF) for years. King says: “Before long, Gilead’s own early research showed that the TAF drug – we’ll call it “the new version” – looked very promising in testing and showed safer results. There was only one problem. Gilead’s patent on the original drug wasn’t going to expire for another nine years and they really wanted to squeeze every buck out of that patent before introducing the new version. So, Gilead stopped its promising research on the new version and bided its time. For years.”

Of course, none of this is new to us, as we have been discussing Gilead’s shadiness since 2022. The “new version,” of course, is TAF or “good Truvada” (which turns out not to be so good.) Back to Trout’s piece, which quotes heavily from King’s.

For background: Gilead is one of the primary pharmaceutical companies manufacturing and marketing anti-HIV medications. One of those, Truvada, was very effective at controlling the virus, but it also caused horrible side effects, damaging the liver and attacking bone density. Gilead's own studies confirmed that "an estimated 16,000 people would die, and 150,000 people would suffer kidney and bone injuries over a nine-year period," as King wrote.

Meanwhile, Gilead was also developing another drug, Descovy, which was just as effective as Truvada but did not have the same side effects. Gilead chose to continue marketing Truvada for nine years, despite knowing that it had an equally effective, less harmful drug to replace it, knowing that patients were suffering kidney damage and loss of bone density.

I think that Trout meant to say that Truvada harmed the kidneys and not the liver, but who knows? Given the toxicities of these drugs, and the fact that the “miracle” protease inhibitors have basically been shelved due to liver and cardiovascular toxicity, it seems reasonable to imagine that Truvada and related drugs might have some liver involvement as well.

But how fascinating is it that Gilead itself estimated 16,000 deaths from the drug? We know that the lawsuits against Gilead for Truvada involve over 26,000 plaintiffs, so that number may well be even higher. Even more alarmingly, 16,000 accounts for more than 1% of the total “HIV” positive population in the United States (estimated to be 1.3 million.) Let that sink in. And these aren’t just theoretical problems—Trout himself admits to having been harmed by Truvada.

Although this inexcusable action by Gilead affects all people with HIV, it is perhaps us long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS who have lived with the virus for 20, 30, 40 years, or more, who are more likely to have taken Truvada and, thus, to be suffering the consequences. I am a 36-year AIDS survivor who took Truvada for about 10 years, who now suffers from advanced osteoporosis. I know several other men who took Truvada at about the same time who have suffered similar or worse physical damage traceable to the drug.

But it gets even worse. Here is where the story takes an even darker turn.

On November 25, 2024, some half-dozen current and past leaders in the community signed on to an amicus ("friend of the court") brief in the case in support of Gilead and against the plaintiffs. Let me repeat, well-known people in the HIV community who have been acclaimed and rewarded as "leaders" in the fight against the pandemic just endorsed a predatory pharmaceutical company over the patients that company has damaged or killed.

I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not. From the beginning, the AIDS activists have been working in lock step with the pharmaceutical companies, for reasons that remain unclear. Certainly many of them sincerely believe in what they are doing, despite how crazy it might seem that they would support the very institutions that have harmed them. Stockholm syndrome much? Or is something else, possibly something more sinister, going on?

Worse still, when King contacted these leaders to ask about their joining the amicus brief, some ignored his attempt to contact them, some responded but declined to comment, one responded with a response that could have come directly from Gilead's attorneys, and one, longtime AIDS advocate Phill Wilson — particularly egregiously — responded with a mea culpa tempered by asserting that he didn't have or take the time to do due diligence on the lawsuit.

Perhaps this shouldn't surprise me as much as it does. As King and others have pointed out, "Big Pharma" has attempted to co-op activists and clinicians in the HIV community. As King put it, "From grassroots activists to clinicians to public health workers to more than one White House AIDS czar, our community talent pool has been depleted by a hiring spree pharma has been on for years. It is a strategy that puts our friends and former co-workers on the other side of the equation, blurring the line between advocacy and commerce."

That’s a pretty powerful statement, and King is not wrong. Finally:

I cannot help wondering whether this fiasco, this blatant betrayal of us HIV patients, could have been avoided if only Gilead had talked with members of the community before it made the decision to withhold Descovy. I'm pretty damned certain that if Gilead had told us that they had a better, safer drug to fight HIV, we would have loudly shouted, "Hell yes, we want the safer drug!"

And that is where the heart of the problem truly lies. Of course they would want the safer drug—who wouldn’t? However, we must remember that “safer” does not equal “safe;” in this situation it simply means “less toxic,” given that we know that TAF or “good Truvada” has cardiovascular adverse events associated with it. Indeed, the history of AIDS treatment is replete with stories of individual drugs, such as AZT, or entire classes of drugs, such as protease inhibitors, that seemed to be nothing short of miraculous upon introduction but that quickly turned out to be so toxic that these drugs are rarely prescribed any longer, unless we’re talking about the protease inhibitor ritonavir being prescribed as half of the Covid “antiviral” Paxlovid. The fact that this is happening yet again with Truvada is a serious indication that the direction of research regarding these drugs is dead wrong. In addition to having terrible toxicities, these drugs are not specific to “HIV.”

I have to say that I am not remotely surprised that “HIV” advocates would go on the record in support of Gilead, despite the actions of the company that clearly indicated at best a lack of concern for, and at worst outright animosity toward, the patients they are treating. I applaud both Hank Trout and Mark S. King for speaking out on the Truvada disaster, but I also note that their criticisms have missed the most important part of the whole sordid story, and that is that these pharmaceutical companies prey upon Black and gay Americans; their primary intention is nothing more than “retaining in care” at least 2 million Americans on toxic drugs, either for PrEP or existing “HIV” positivity. But it never ends well, and we know it. How many failed, toxic “anti-HIV” drugs, how many vaccine trials abandoned for futility, how many individuals with “HIV” negative AIDS must be ignored before we finally come face to face with the truth about these drugs? Will we need a quilt to commemorate all the victims of Truvada, AZT, and all the other cell-killing drugs being prescribed en masse to “risk groups,” having the effect of not only harming their health forever, but also stigmatizing them due to their being “retained in care” for a lifetime?

Let me know what you think of this depressing development in the comments.