by yoursl | Sep 24, 2015 | LGBT, Men's Sexual Health, Sex and Pharmaceuticals, Sexually Transmitted Diseases |
The HIV medication Truvada was first approved for use by the Federal Drug Administration in August 2004. Made by California-based pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences, Inc., Truvada contains two active drugs, emtricitabine and tenofovir disproxil fumarate and was originally approved for use as an antiretroviral agent. Antiretrovirals are in a drug classification of medications used to treat HIV and AIDS. All HIV medications work by disabling the steps the virus takes when hijacking uninfected cells. The goal of antiretroviral treatment is to keep the amount of HIV in the body at a low level to help stop the weakening of the immune system, which can lead to the development of AIDS, and to allow the immune system to recover from any damage that HIV might have already caused. There are more than 20 FDA-approved antiretroviral medications in use today. When only one antiretroviral medication is used to treat HIV, the virus can become resistant to that medication, making it ineffective over time. Taking two or more antiretroviral medications at one time is called combination therapy. The goal of combination therapy is to limit the rate at which HIV becomes resistant to the medications and, therefore, making treatment more effective over a longer period of time. Since its approval in 2004, Truvada has shown great promise in reducing the risk of acquiring an HIV infection. The medication works so well in suppressing HIV infections in the blood that HIV-positive people who regularly take Truvada can show negative results on HIV blood tests, which renders them nearly noninfectious despite their being HIV-positive in status. In July 2012, Truvada became the first FDA-approved...
by yoursl | Sep 10, 2015 | LGBT, Sex and Religion, Sex in the News |
I know firsthand what religious intolerance and hate in the name of God feels like. I grew up in their shadows, but I grew OUT of those shadows as well. I used the religious intolerance and hatred I experienced in my childhood and adolescence as a jumping off point in my quest for knowledge. At the time, I simply wanted to know as much as I could about the world around me in the hopes I would eventually find other people like me. The purpose of my blog is to give readers knowledge and information. As tempting as it is to use my blog as a platform to give my own opinion of the situation involving Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Ky., clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, I am instead going to follow my blog’s mission of “Knowledge should not be forbidden” and provide my readers with pertinent information. Since faith is at the heart of the Davis issue, let’s look at some religions and their views on the subject of same-sex marriages. Davis’ faith is Apostolic Christian, which means she is a member of the Pentecost branch of Christianity. In 2011, the Pew Research Center estimated that there were 279 million Pentecostal Christians in the world. This figure equates to 4 percent of the world’s 2011 population and to 12.8 percent of the world’s Christian population in 2011. In an article published this week in USA Today, Vinson Synan, a professor of church history at Regent University in Virginia and an expert on the Pentecostal faith, stated, “There are an estimated 15...
