DoxyPrEP — what could go wrong?

This is going to be a short post, and I’m sure I’ll address this in more detail later, but I had to call attention to something that I’d heard of in passing but hadn’t really assimilated until a commenter mentioned it recently (h/t Christopher T).

In the comments of recent posts, the following paradox has been mentioned repeatedly and that is the following: if HIV is an STD, why has its prevalence in the population remained virtually constant for forty years, whereas the occurrence of traditional STIs has not been following the same trajectory; indeed, according to the CDC, they have been increasing for the past decade (according to The Body piece linked above, it’s been two decades)?

With the advent of PrEP as a sort of replacement for the HIV vaccines that have somehow been impossible to produce (must sell drugs somehow), the natural next step after selling a lifetime of chemotherapy to perfectly healthy people to supposedly protect them from a phantom virus was to propose that—since PrEP admittedly does nothing to protect the patient from contracting “traditional” STIs—perhaps there ought to be an equivalent to PrEP, but for prophylaxis against bacterial STIs such as gonorrhea and chlamydia. Thus was born the concept of DoxyPrEP—combining “anti-HIV” PrEP with prophylactic doxycycline to prevent bacterial STIs. One can never take enough pharmaceuticals, apparently. (I should point out that doxycycline has been thus far mostly used as POST exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, within 72 hours after an “exposure,” but the push to make this part of PRE exposure prophylaxis is gaining momentum rapidly.)

According to one article in The Body Pro:

DoxyPrEP involves taking daily doxycycline as pre-exposure prophylaxis for bacterial STIs. DoxyPEP involves taking doxycycline as post-exposure prophylaxis for bacterial STIs between 24 and 72 hours after an episode of sex without a condom.

From The Body (different article; no comment added because the story speaks for itself):

Keith Byrd describes his first experience with doxyPrEP as accidental. In 2019—before he’d ever heard of the strategy to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs)—he’d been taking a daily dose of the antibiotic doxycycline to treat a skin infection. While taking the medicine, Byrd participated in Cannonball—a bear event that takes place in Fort Lauderdale, where the IT sales professional lives.

[…]

“At the event, I had a lot of fun,” Byrd tells TheBody. “There [were] sex rooms and a lot of guys that I knew from all over the country.” After Cannonball ended, three people contacted Byrd to let him know they’d tested positive for chlamydia. He went for testing, but his results came back negative. Just to be sure, Byrd says, his doctor called him back for a second urine sample and additional swab. Again, both results were negative.

Sometime the next year, Byrd learned about doxycycline pre-exposure prophylaxis (doxyPrEP)―when people take doxycycline daily for a period of time to protect themselves against STIs―and connected it to his experience at Cannonball. “Well, I guess that’s what prevented it,” he remembers thinking. “All these people tested positive for chlamydia, and I never contracted it.”

I don’t know about you, but this is alarming to me. I was shocked when I first learned about PrEP—it seemed so patently ridiculous at first glance—but this is really something else. What about the well known phenomena of antibiotic resistance and antibiotic abuse? Add to those the known propensity of antibiotics to promote an overgrowth of yeast, potentially leading to fungal infections (which are classical AIDS-defining conditions, I must note) and one could be forgiven for wondering what on earth these “medical professionals” are thinking when they propose schemes such as DoxyPrEP?

Perhaps the correct answer is the most obvious one, and that is that the ultimate goal of the powers that be is to create as many customers for life as possible. It’s working for them, but for how much longer?

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