Opinion: Study will unite HIV advocates, add funding pressure to Obama administration

May 18 2011

In a post on Foreign Policy's "Passport" blog, assistant managing editor Elizabeth Dickinson looks at the potential ramifications of a recent study, which found that early antiretroviral treatment in HIV-positive people can prevent transmission by 96 percent.

"If the results of this new study hold," prevention advocates and treatment advocates "will be joined. Treatment will be prevention, and the best prevention, treatment. The question may have answered itself. The politics and the science will suddenly agree over the most effective public health response," she writes. "So the only catch now? The cost. Under the Obama administration's new Global Health Initiative, funding for antiretrovirals is growing at a much slower pace than it did in the previous half-decade. The pressure will be on now more than ever to ratchet that up" (5/16).