Censorship of Truvada lawsuit ads continues
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I was recently alerted to the following publication, from the University of North Carolina, attempting to assure any participants in studies involving Truvada that they have absolutely no adverse events to concern themselves with, just in case they had seen any ads for the lawsuits against Gilead Pharmaceuticals for Truvada and other similar anti-HIV drugs and might connect some dots:
I found the following quote rather interesting (emphasis mine).
So far, studies of people taking Truvada for PrEP have not shown any increased risk for broken bones. We also know from studies of people living with HIV taking Truvada and people who take Truvada as PrEP that if someone stops taking the drug their bone density recovers close to where it was before they started Truvada.
Apparently, Truvada does not cause significant bone density loss; at the same time, the paper states that when patients stop Truvada their bone density returns to normal, directly contradicting their earlier statement. Moreover, the entire point of these medications is that they are meant to be taken for a lifetime; “retained in care” being the ultimate end goal of the paradigm. If it is indeed the case that bone density returns to normal after stopping Truvada, how is this paper supposed to encourage people to continue taking this medication?
This is not the first attempt to revive the reputation of Gilead Pharmaceuticals, which has been on the receiving end of some negative publicity thanks to the multiple lawsuits—including a class action lawsuit involving 23,000 plaintiffs—alleging kidney and bone damage as a result of several of its anti-HIV drugs, Truvada being the most commonly prescribed. In 2019, a successful campaign was launched to censor any ads for Truvada lawsuits on Facebook:
Facebook has removed some advertisements containing what the company says is misleading health information about the HIV-prevention drug, Truvada, following an outcry from LBGTQ groups and politicians.
"After a review, our independent fact checking partners have determined some of the ads in question mislead people about the effects of Truvada," Facebook spokesperson Devon Kearns told ABC News in an email. "As a result we have rejected these ads and they can no longer run on Facebook."
There was an article about this in The Body (emphasis mine):
Mena added that Truvada is one of the most common antiretrovirals used in the world. In fact, the World Health Organization's guidelines for HIV treatment prescription begin with TDF alongside two or three more drugs. "Like any drugs," he said, "there are risks. But the benefits outweigh any risk that it may have."
On Facebook, where many of these ads appear, activists have also used the platform to express their dismay. In the ACT UP New York Facebook group, one member wrote, "I know we all hate Gilead and are working to lower the price of PrEP. But now I'm seeing people avoid PrEP, due to ads like this that completely exaggerate the risks of Truvada. How do we hold Gilead accountable for its bad behavior without scaring people? How do we counter all these ads, which are destroying years of hard work to get people on PrEP?"
In PrEP Facts, a private group dedicated to PrEP that boasts over 21,000 members worldwide, a member posted a screenshot of an ad from a page called, "Truvada Injury Claims," that was taken down after he reported it. He called the taking down of the post "a small victory" in his caption. Several other members reported hearing people say that the ads were scaring away potential PrEP users. Others said that they have begun to use Facebook's "report" feature on the ads daily.
It is deeply suspicious and creepy that there exist entities that want nothing more than to deny patients the right to the full information regarding their (often very expensive) treatments, meant to be taken in perpetuity. Regardless, it appears clear that there is a concerted effort on the part of AIDS activists and the organizations that fund them to whitewash the Truvada atrocities, despite the fact that no one is willing to go so far as to try to defend the indefensible behavior of Gilead Pharmaceuticals. (As the quote above says, “We all hate Gilead.”) There is a kind of tacit acknowledgment that the company is corrupt; yet we are meant to believe that their highly profitable medicines are nothing but “life saving.” Why should we believe that they are somehow being completely honest and above board about the safety and efficacy profiles of their medications, which would be a direct contradiction to their clear pattern of behavior? Why should we believe them at all? Why trash Gilead while praising Truvada? It certainly isn’t because of robust clinical trial data. Something doesn’t add up.