African women gain protection from AIDS

Will we learn much more about this in Big Media?

Hello friends

I have been quiet on Substack for several months while I’ve been recovering from pneumonia and COVID, and before that my lupus flare had been making writing difficult. Hopefully, my health will continue to improve and I’ll be able to write to you more frequently in the future.

Yesterday, in Nature Briefing, the Senior Editor, Flora Graham, excitedly announced a report from the 2024 AIDS Conference in Munich in July: South African researcher Linda-Gail Bekker had presented the results of a trial in adolescent and young women in South Africa and Uganda , where twice-yearly injections of lenacapavir provided 100% protection against HIV.

The drug is not a vaccine; it inhibits HIV-1 replication by interfering with the viral lifecycle (by altering its protein shell and blocking its ability to bind to cell membranes and invade the cell nucleus, and by interfering with viral asssembly and replication in the host cell cytoplasm). A daily pill was not as effective, but the researchers found the women had not consistently taken it on a daily basis.

In a surprising reversal of usual priorities in medical research, a second trial in the US and 6 other countries on men who have sex with men has not yet been completed (Science). According to a report in the Guardian “US-based Gilead Sciences sells the injectable lenacapavir as Sunlenca for $42,250 over the first year. A new study says it could be made for about $40 a year” (Lay 2024). Note that a recent study found that brand-name originator drugs sold in the US cost 300 to 400 % the prices of the same product sold elsewhere (Mulcahy, Schwam & Lovejoy 2024).

The research and all reports about it that I have cited were done by women. The principal researcher, Professor Bekker, is head of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. Her profile on the University of Cape Town website demonstrates that she has a strong social conscience (though a feminist approach is not obvious) , describing how ‘she is is passionate about community development and engagement; her most recent community projects have included community-based HIV treatment, peer-led community education, mobile health services (Tutu testers) to the neediest populations, a comprehensive youth centre providing recreation, education and SRH services to youth from periurban settings and dedicated adolescent HIV care services.” It is a small glimmer of a breakthrough for women into a Foreground Present (Daly 1992, Outercourse, p7) from a past where ‘health’ has been ‘men’s health’ and AIDS is a ‘gay plague’. The shocking prevalence of AIDS in Africa testifies to patriarchal indifference to the effects of AIDS in the heterosexual act on women and children. This drug trial is a welcome antidote. But will all women find hope when the drug is unlikely to expand their worlds to that of abstinence from heterosex, either preached by patriarchal religions like that of the social reformer Tutu but without much uptake by patriarchal societies ,where rape is the norm, or by lesbian feminism that is highly stigmatised in African countries?