Pediatricians’ “discomfort” with PrEP [edited]

I’m surprised they’re not suggesting putting PrEP in the water at this point

[This post has been edited to include a ridiculous video; scroll down.] This will be a very short post, but I wanted to draw your attention to the following piece, that was published yesterday:

Pediatricians’ discomfort with PrEP

Apparently, the 1.2 million Americans that “might benefit from” PrEP now includes children. This isn’t new; you heard it here first. But it is very disturbing.

Despite being at a heightened risk of HIV, the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among adolescents remains low, which may stem from access to this biomedical intervention and the comfort of providers caring for this priority population.

[…]

There is a need for ongoing education for pediatric providers to increase comfort and knowledge of biomedical HIV prevention to make it more readily available.

This is completely insane. What is being done to our children? There certainly seems to be a war on our children; although there have recently been signs that the madness of transitioning children might be about to come to an end. I guess if we can’t “retain [them] in care” on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, we can just poison them with PrEP. Got it.

There’s not a whole lot more interesting in this piece, although they did do some nifty (though not terribly useful) statistical analysis—check it out for yourself at the link above if you like. But I thought it was important to bring your attention to the fact that the AIDS activists would love nothing more than to get their hooks into your children. There are a few more quotes I’d like to highlight:

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends yearly well-child evaluations throughout adolescence with a specific recommendation to provide opportunities for confidential discussions with the provider starting at age eleven. This recommendation, as well as recommendations for sexually transmitted disease counseling and screening based on risk, can be found in the AAP Bright Futures Guidelines [7]. These testing recommendations are reinforced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention |8]. The US Preventative Services Task Force recommends routine HIV testing of persons 13-64 years [9]; however, studies of adolescents have found that only approximately 9-10% of youth have been tested for HIV by the end of high school [10]. Many do not recall talking about HIV or hearing about PrEP from their provider (11], regardless of disclosing HIV risk factors.

What is meant by “routine” testing? Yearly? It isn’t clear. Also, if you repeatedly apply a test that has known cross-reactions, the chance that that test will falsely ping positive only increases with each test. But I’m preaching to the choir here. The article also claims PrEP is “99% effective,” which as we know is nonsense. We’re almost done. From the Discussion:

This study demonstrates the ongoing need for additional training for pediatric providers to provide PrEP. While general awareness of PrEP increased between survey time points, this study found no significant change in comfort in clinical scenarios related to prescribing or monitoring a patient on PrEP nor in knowledge necessary to safely prescribe and monitor the use of PrEP in a patient. More than 30% of the respondents could not correctly identify one laboratory test to recommend prior to the initiation of PrEP, and only 75% of respondents indicated that HIV testing would be among their initial laboratory tests, suggesting a significant knowledge gap.

I’ll conclude by saying that this study was conducted in Maryland, “limiting the generalization of the results to the wider pediatric community.” But that’s not the point here in this post today—the point is, leave our children alone. Please.

Edited to add: Maybe these pediatricians ought to watch this ridiculous video for more information on how “life is better with PrEP:”