AIDS 2008 Impact Report Available

The AIDS 2008 Impact Report, a report of the key learning from the XVII International AIDS Conference, held in Mexico City in August 2008, is now available here.

The report is also available on the AIDS 2008 homepage, as well as the IAS homepage.

According to the IAS, the report is not meant to capture all of the hundreds of sessions, events and activities at AIDS 2008 (as no one report could reasonably do this), rather it is an analysis/reflection on the key learning in the following areas:

- Epidemiology

- Basic and Clinical Research

- Biomedical Prevention Research

- Regional Focus

- and a section on how AIDS 2008 and previous international AIDS conferences have contributed to the overall response to HIV/AIDS

All analyses are referenced to sessions/abstracts.

Please note that several organizations are producing their own reports associated with conference activities, or key issues/areas of focus during AIDS 2008, and we will make them available on the AIDS 2008 website as well.

Oh, the Humanity

We must envision a day
when we are reflexively
empathetic to gay men.

Homophobia—multiplied nineteen times

by Jim Pickett
in the November/December 2008 issue of Positively Aware

So, as it turns out, efforts (and the lack thereof) to eradicate HIV across the globe are systematically ignoring, denying, under-serving, and failing gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM).

While this was not exactly a surprise on a planet where 86 countries continue to criminalize LGBTs in any number of human rights-crushing ways, to fully comprehend the broad, wide-reaching neglect of gay/MSM in the global AIDS pandemic is nevertheless a shock and awe to the soul. I was delighted that this issue emerged as a key, defining theme of the XVII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2008), held in Mexico City August 3–8.

The AIDS 2006 conference in Toronto had frustrated me with the paucity of discussion and energy around gay/MSM topics. While AIDS 2008 featured gay/MSM issues prominently, my emotions were yet again set to frustration, and rage, as the extent of the neglect was revealed in countless plenaries, sessions, symposia, and press conferences.

Read the rest of the article.

Young Women's Right to HIV Prevention!

Georgina Caswell, youth journalist at AIDS2008 (and UK African Microbicides Working Group member) interviews Arwa Meijer from the Global Campaign for Microbicides.

To see the brief 2 minute interview, click on the image below...

"Young women often have difficulty negotiating condom use... Microbicides are another option for prevention, a range of products that can reduce the transmission of HIV and other STIs when applied in the vagina or rectum... Women have the right to have different options that they can use... and that's what the right to HIV prevention is all about."

Chatting with TheBody.com about Lubricants and the Development of Anal Microbicides

Jim Pickett chats up lubes with Bonnie Goldman

At the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City last month, TheBody's Bonnie Goldman asked Jim Pickett of IRMA to discuss IRMA's poster - "International Lubricant Use Behaviors for Anal Intercourse: Focus on Women."

Here is how the chat began:

[Jim] In 2007, IRMA did a huge survey on lubricants used for anal sex, in which we had about 9,000 people respond from 107 countries, in six languages (including 1,000 in Turkish -- who would have ever known?). Out of all of those who responded, we had 911 women respond. From those, 428 reported that they had engaged in anal intercourse or anal sex with toys in the last six months.

The poster looks at those [428 women]. It shows how they use lubricant [lube] -- or if they don't use lubricant -- as well as some interesting behavioral things. For instance, we found that most women don't really want lube with flavor, color or smell. They equally like lube consistency to be either thick or thin, and they also would like a silicone-based formulation.

Interestingly -- in terms of getting a sense of how people use lubricants -- is the substances we found that people add to their lube. This is interesting in terms of potential rectal microbicides in the future, which is really what this is about. A large number of people indicated that they added vaginal fluid to their lube, or saliva, or water. What does that mean in terms of testing for efficacy and safety? We're going to have to figure out how to do that in the lab, because vaginal fluid could very much change some of the properties [of a rectal microbicide]. Maybe it enhances it. Maybe it makes it something toxic. That was an interesting "Aha!" moment: We can't just test the actual product; we have to test it in the ways that people are really using it, before we get to people really using it.

[Bonnie] It's curious to me that you're studying lubricant use. Is that a critical part of figuring out aspects of future rectal microbicides? What's the connection?

[Jim] A rectal microbicide could very well be formulated as a lubricant. There would be some kind of chemical or agent put into a lube that would provide protection against HIV. It could also be delivered rectally through an enema, a douche, a suppository. We were sussing out, in the overall, huge survey [of both men and women], how people use lubes and what lubes they use, to figure out how acceptable it would be, among both populations, to use a lube for [anal sex].

We really wanted to get a sense of what lubes people were using because, in fact -- and this could be another project, for more researchers -- lubes that we use for sex aren't tested for safety. These are FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]-regulated products, but they are not testing them for safety. They're considered cosmetic, even though they're going "in" places [in people's bodies] and staying there.

So we wanted to get a sense of what people are actually using, and then push researchers -- such as at Population Council, or wherever -- to test them. We need safety data on lubes that we're already using.

Microbicides are the next step, or a couple steps away. We need information on lubes right now.

Read the rest on TheBody.com.

Check out the abstract and additional info on the poster.

Photos from AIDS 2008 - FRESH!

So, IRMA finally got its act together and uploaded all of our photos from AIDS 2008 in Mexico City into a set on Flickr. Click here to see all of them.

The picture above was taken at Partners in New Prevention Technologies booth in the Global Village IRMA shared with the Global Campaign for Microbicides, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the African Microbicides Advocacy Group and PATH. IRMA member Lanre Onigbogi of Nigeria is pictured center.

Check out all of our photos and see IRMA - and our friends - in action --- from the "Invisibile Men" pre-conference to IRMA's event with Elizabeth Pisani to protests, posters, plenaries, workshops and the Global Village.

Have photos you would like to add to our AIDS 2008 collection? Send us an email! Many thanks to Arwa Meijer (pictured top right) of the Global Campaign for Microbicides for sharing some of her best pics with us.

Forgotten Truths, Hidden Realities: Addressing the Dynamics of HIV and MSM in Unfavorable Environments

Forgotten Truths, Hidden Realities:
Addressing the Dynamics of HIV and MSM in Unfavorable Environments

[session at AIDS 2008]

Speakers for this session:
	Chairperson Joel Nana Africa Research and Policy Associate International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
	Overcoming Homophobia, Violence, Stigma and Discrimination as a Way to Promote HIV Prevention Among Gay Men in Ghana Mac-Darling Cobbinah Executive Director Centre for Population Education and Human Rights Accra, Ghana
	HIV Prevention, Care and Support for MSM in a Post-Soviet Country: Fighting with Old Stereotypes and New Realities Zoryan Kis Project Director All-Ukrainian Coalition of the HIV-service Organizations Ukraine
	The Yogyakarta Principles at the International HIV/AIDS Conference in Mexico, August 2008 Boris Dittrich Advocacy Director of the LBGT Rights Program Human Rights Watch
	From Invisibility to Being a Core High Risk Group - The Journey of India's Colorful Communities of Marginalized Sexualities Waking up to the Genocide of HIV and AIDS Ashok Row Kavi Founder-Chairperson Humsafar Trust India

Click here for the video, podcast, and transcript.

“HIV is a virus, not a crime"

Justice Edwin Cameron calls for a campaign
against 'misguided criminal laws and prosecutions'

“HIV is a virus, not a crime,” argued South African Supreme Court Justice Edwin Cameron during his impassioned call for “a campaign against criminalisation” on the final day of the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.

Justice Cameron’s plenary presentation was the vocalisation – and culmination – of a growing movement against criminalisation of HIV exposure and transmission that has been supported – and nourished – by organisations as powerful and diverse as UNAIDS and UNDP; the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GNP+); the International Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS (ICW); the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF); the Open Society Institute; the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network; and the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA); as well as many individual academics and HIV advocates.

Read the whole article on aidsmap.


Highlight:

Ten reasons why criminal prosecutions are bad policy

However, he provided ten reasons why creating HIV-specific laws, or applying current assault laws, to anything other than intentional HIV transmission are “misdirected and bad” policy. Many of these arguments were developed from a paper that Justice Cameron recently published in JAMA, co-written with Scott Burris of Temple University Beasley School of Law and Michaela Clayton of ARASA.

• Criminalisation is ineffective since it targets people already diagnosed, when studies show that most HIV transmission takes place during sex between two consenting adults neither of whom is aware that the other is infected with HIV.

• Criminal laws and criminal prosecutions are “shoddy and misguided substitutes” for measures that really protect those at risk of contracting HIV. “We need effective prevention, protection against discrimination, reduced stigma, strong leadership, greater access to testing and most importantly, treatment,” he said.

• Criminalisation victimises, oppresses and endangers women. Although policymakers’ impulse is often to protect women, “it is a grievously misguided impulse” because many laws, especially those in Africa, expose women “to assault, to ostracism and to further stigma” making them “more vulnerable to HIV, not less vulnerable. Rather, he argued, we need laws that guarantee a women’s social and economic status, and that enhance their “capacity to negotiate safer sex and to protect them for predatory sexual partners. We must change the social circumstances that will empower those women to say no when they wish to and to insist on protection when they want to.”

• Criminalisation is often unfairly and selectively enforced. He noted that “prosecutions and laws single out already vulnerable groups like sex workers, men who have sex with men, and in European countries, black males.”

• Criminalisation places blame on one person instead of responsibility on two. “The person who passes on the virus may be more guilty that the person who acquires it,” he said, “but criminalisation unfairly and inappropriately places all the blame on the person with HIV.”

• Criminalisation laws are difficult and degrading to apply. “Those laws that target reckless, or negligent or inadvertent transmission of HIV only introduce uncertainty into an area that is already difficult to police,” he noted. “In court we look back with a clinical harshness of the lawyer's eye on the complexities of these transactions and I do not believe that it is proper for the law to do so.”

• Many HIV-specific laws are extremely poorly drafted. He cited the example of Sierra Leone, based on the African Model Law, which explicitly criminalises mother-to-child transmission and is vague about who will be prosecuted and under what circumstances.

• HIV criminalisation increases stigma. “It is stigma,” he said, “that I believe lies behind the enactment of these bad laws. Those laws seem attractive, but they are not prevention or treatment friendly. They are hostile to both. And this is simply because they add fuel to the fires of stigma. Prosecutions for HIV transmissions and exposure and the chilling content of the laws themselves reinforce the idea of HIV as a shameful, disgraceful, unworthy condition requiring isolation and ostracism.”

• Criminalisation is a blatant disincentive to testing. “Why would a woman in Kenya want to go for an HIV test when she knows that it will expose her to seven years in jail?” he asked.

• Criminalisation assumes the worst about people with HIV, and punishes their vulnerability.

Read the whole article on aidsmap.

Will male circumcision protect women, ask advocates?

Excerpt:

Marge Berer highlighted confusion among men about the degree of protection that circumcision affords, and the danger that men may use condoms less frequently or not at all following the operation. To counteract such problems, she suggested that circumcision should be publicly described as like a cheap condom that breaks 40% of time.

Berer gave the hypothetical example of a man who had refused an HIV test at the time of circumcision, and was unknowingly HIV-positive. He thinks that circumcision will now protect him from HIV and so stops using condoms. “If he continues depositing semen in his partner’s body every time they have sex, his partner is in a worse position than he or she was before," she said.

Read the rest on aidsmap.

Hope for PrEP to prevent HIV infection

by Boeb Roehr, via the Bay Area Reporter

PrEP, shorthand for pre-exposure prophylaxis, is the next great hope for HIV prevention. Given recent failures of vaccine and microbicide trials, participants at the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City were eager to give PrEP a whirl.

Excerpt:

"I really believe it will work. If it is as effective as we think it is going to be, it should revolutionize the way that HIV prevention dollars are spent." - Dr. Tom Coates

Read the whole article here.

Read more PrEP items on the IRMA blog here.

Read more about PrEP on PrEP Watch.

Piot Rails Against Homophobia at AIDS 2008

The following is an excerptsfrom a speech given by UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot at a pre-conference event called "The Invisible Men: Gay Men and Other MSM [Men Who Have Sex With Men] in the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic." The meeting was sponsored by the Global Forum on MSM & HIV. IRMA presented at this meeting. Click here for pictures and a link to the slides.

"There's a terrible underfunding of programs for MSM, and yet this is the population where the epidemic is in most countries.

"There's something that, as a straight man, I really have a hard time understanding, and that is this obsessive homophobia that I find, and which tells me that there's something going on in the heads of people that must mean that they are having a major problem with their own sexuality. [Applause.] There may be other explanations, but this is my opinion, and I have been everywhere in the world and have meet people like that, including in the UN system. But it is totally absurd, and it's also cruel. I think that the title of this meeting is only too apt. I'm really more and more convinced that homophobia is one of the top five obstacles to really stopping this epidemic. That's where I think we need to probably have a more scientific, businesslike approach to how we tackle this. There are some really fantastic programs, and here, I would really like to pay tribute to Jorge Saavedra and the Mexican government for supporting him with its anti-homophobia campaign, and the whole of the activist groups. But there are not too many countries where this is happening, and yet there are so many places where these programs are needed.

"In a growing number of countries, we may be reaching a tipping point where working with MSM becomes really possible, and where we can see results. That didn't happen by coincidence. It's proof that some of our joint advocacy and insistence are bearing fruit. I feel strongly that our accountability in UNAIDS is not only to governments or our Program Coordination Board, but to the people. The charter of the UN says, "We the people," and so there is that kind of accountability, also. But it's much harder to translate into government structures, that's for sure."

Read more here, on TheBody.com.

At Meeting on AIDS, Focus Shifts to Long Haul

"...microbicides — chemicals that are inserted into the vagina or rectum to prevent H.I.V. infection..."

In the New York Times today, Lawrence Altman summarizes the mood of AIDS 2008 in Mexico City. IRMA was especially thrilled that he used a clear and correct definition for microbicides, as seen above.

Excerpt:

"Though the meeting this month had its circuslike elements, the mood was much more sober. No major breakthroughs were announced, and cutting-edge research findings were rare. The great strides that many researchers thought they were on the verge of making in 2006 — in vaccines, microbicides and herpes-suppressive drugs to reduce H.I.V. transmission — have failed to materialize."

Read the whole article here.


And in case there were any doubts...
ADVOCACY WORKS

IRMA member Gary Hammond of the UK sent the following note to Altman recently, after an article he penned on PrEP. We are SURE this had an effect! Nice work Gary!!!

"Dear Lawrence,

I am curious as to why there was no mention in your PrEP article about the study in Thailand with IDU drug users, funded by the CDC.

Also do you not think that you were factually incorrect in your description of Microbicides in that you omitted to mention that research is also ongoing into people being able to use them rectally... is it really that unacceptable in the USA to mention ANAL SEX and INJECTION DRUG USE in a newspaper?

Shame as you missed out on reporting on the results of the rectal microbicide study in Macaques... probably the best news we have had in relation to microbicides in a long time...

I look forward to your timely reply!

Best wishes..."

Global AIDS prevention gives short shrift to gays

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Jorge Saavedra's moment of truth came in the middle of an impassioned speech to 5,000 people about the paltry amount of money being spent to stop the spread of AIDS among gay men.

The Mexican federal official paused, then said publicly for the first time that he was gay. As he held up a photo of himself with his partner, the crowd applauded wildly. Afterward, men from Africa and India congratulated him with tears in their eyes.

"They told me that I was a hero, and that they wished they could do the same in their countries," said Saavedra, who is infected with HIV and also heads the AIDS prevention program in a country where many gay men live in denial.

Saavedra's coming out on Tuesday at the International AIDS Conference sent a powerful message to the world: Homophobia must be stamped out if AIDS is to be controlled. Fewer people are dying from AIDS, but new HIV infections among gay and bisexual men in many countries are rising at alarming rates.Yet less than 1 percent of the $669 million reported in global prevention spending targets men who have sex with men, according to UNAIDS figures from 2006, the latest available data.

Read the rest.

Caught by the paparazzi at AIDS 2008

These are only a few of the many pics we have snapped of IRMA members and friends (and protests and speakers and other exciting stuff) at AIDS 2008 in Mexico City. In the next week or so we will have ALL the photos uploaded into a complete set for your viewing pleasure...

Until then, we hope you enjoy these.

And please, if you have photos you would like to add to the IRMA AIDS 2008 photo set, please send them to Jim Pickett here.

Commercial lubricant use for anal sex among men who have sex with men in Lima, Peru

IRMA steering committee member Jerry Galea (above, IRMA-ALC dynamo, and the driving force behind the Spanish translation of "Less Silence, More Science") presented the above poster on behalf of himself and his colleagues. Check out the abstract here.

As luck would have it, his poster was right next to the IRMA poster.

Here are a few more pics from the poster exhbition yesterday.

What are the Sacred Cows of HIV Prevention?

A Conversation with Elizabeth Pisani

Text from today's Caucus newsletter (Aug 6 insert), distributed at AIDS 2008

By Jennifer Johnson, Population Action International

"We need to be clear that this is the best researched disease in history. We know what to do to prevent HIV infection, but we’re not drawing a straight line between what we know and what we do," stated Elizabeth Pisani, author of The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS.

This session [Monday, August 4] sponsored by the Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention and the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates, was a frank discussion among advocates, framed around Pisani’s idea of the "sacred cows of HIV" (an analogy taken from drivers in India swerving to avoid cows in the road). What are the "sacred cows" standing in the way of progress in the fight against AIDS?

Religious groups that advocate for policy based in ideology rather than evidence may be one. Or the AIDS industry itself, which has framed AIDS as "everybody’s problem" in order to draw attention and funding, rather than focusing attention on the groups most at risk. The history of HIV/AIDS activism may be to blame, creating anti-testing and pro-treatment biases rather than a focus on prevention. There is also the assumption that people will make rational decisions about their health (e.g., using condoms and clean needles), when the evidence is that people are not rational about sex and drugs.

The group also discussed the need to strengthen health systems in general. Are poverty reduction, food security and women’s empowerment issues also AIDS issues or should they be kept separate? As Pisani stated, "Why do we need HIV to fight against sexual violence?" Some liked the idea of using HIV as a catalyst for ensuring these basic human rights, but others thought the funda-mentals of HIV prevention should be the focus.

This discussion is only one of many that are necessary to topple our "sacred cows" and promote HIV prevention based in scientific evidence.

[more photos from this event, and the rest of AIDS 2008, will be posted in a complete set upon IRMA's triumphant return to HQ]

International Lubricant Use Behaviours for Anal Intercourse - Focus on Women

IRMA is presenting this poster at AIDS 2008 today.

Click here to read the abstract, view a PDF of the poster, and to check out an array of additional information.

...To The Land of Rectal!

¨Rectal microbicides are incredibly important,
and need to be developed.¨

Yesterday, at AIDS 2008, there was a huge session entitled -
Vaccines and Microbicides: Where Do We Go from Here?

Click the link to take you to Kaiser´s video and podcast of the entire program.

But let us quickly highlight this interesting session... While overall, there was not much said about rectal microbicides, there were some key moments to make rectal microbicide advocates giddy.

Panelist Zeda Rosenberg (pictured middle), Chief Executive Officer of International Partnership for Microbicides who spoke on ¨Antiretroviral-Based Microbicides and IPM,¨ was asked by moderator Mitchell Warren (pictured bottom), Executive Director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition about rectal microbicides.

And this is what she had to say -

¨Rectal microbicides are incredibly important, and need to be developed.¨

Zeda went on to say that while the ¨proof of concept¨was simpler to determine for vaginal microbicides, and that creating safe and effective rectal microbicides mean dealing with some distinct formulation challenges, the research and development of rectal microbicides ¨need to be encouraged.¨

THANK YOU ZEDA!

Also on the panel was IRMA Steering Committee member Manju Chatani, Coordinator of the African Microbicide Advocacy Group, (pictured top) who spoke on Microbicide Community Mobilization and Trial Participation.¨ She mentioned the good advocacy and community work of IRMA several times and underlined the need both men and women have for safe, effective, acceptable rectal microbicides.

THANK YOU MANJU!

These simple ¨shout outs¨ in high·profile venues are important to IRMA and more significantly, to the field at large. We hope these type of endorsements from respected leaders in the microbicide field will help encourage new funders to come to the table with resources, resources, resources for both research and development activities as well as advocacy work. Rectal microbicide research needs, conservatively, to have at least a 5x increase in yearly expenditures, from approximately $7 million USD to $35 million if we are to have a healthy drug development pipeline.

And our advocacy efforts also need support!

Advocacy, community education, awareness, engagement and mobilization activities are all critical factors in moving the field forward. Don´t forget about IRMA!

Sex between men: the highest prevalence of HIV and the least amount of resources to prevent it

IRMA made the Global Voice (La Voz Global) yesterday - the official newspaper of the AIDS 2008 conference...

See below. Here is the link to the full issue.

Segregation has played an important role in the fact that, in certain countries, MSM, or ‘men who have sex with men’, have been affected in greater numbers than in any other communities. However, generally speaking, studies regarding the characteristics of the epidemic among MSM communities are not given enough support or attention, which causes a problem that becomes two-fold. On the one hand, men having sex with men are being widely stigmatized as one of the communities most affected by HIV/AIDS. On the other hand, in many countries, this population is being frequently left out from support and research programs and projects.

The organizers of the pre-conference entitled Invisible Men: Gay Men and Other MSM in the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic call attention to this situation. It has been stated that the risk for men who have sex with men to contract HIV is 19 times higher than for the rest of the population. In Malawi for example, the number of HIV infections among MSM is almost double than that of men who do not have sex with other men, as it has been shown in a study supported by both the US and Canada. Another investigation presented in this event, carried out in Ukraine, showed that the incidence of HIV in MSM communities is not geographically homogeneous: while in the capital of the country, Kiev, the prevalence rate is 4.4 percent, in Odesa, that figure has reached 23.2 percent.

This is how Peter Piot, UNAIDS Executive Director, drew attention to the imbalance that exists between the high prevalence rates of HIV infections and the scant amount of resources allocated to HIV control among MSM and homosexual communities. Dr. Piot insisted on the need for economic funds to fight homophobia, since homophobia is what facilitates the spreading of the virus.

David Wilson, representing the World Bank, was also present at the event. He illustrated thecurrent situation of the pandemic, and stated the need to form strategic alliances in order to be able to contain the epidemic, especially among men who have sex with men.

Jim Pickett, from the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates (IRMA), in turn, expounded on the urgent need to promote the development of microbicides specifically designed for use in anal sex practises, which might be one of the most effective methods for preventing HIV transmission through anal sex. Given the histological characteristics of the anus and the rectum, risks of HIV transmission are much higher than those existing in vaginal sexual contact. According to the presenters, anal sex practices are widespread among the general population, making it strange that it is exclusively associated with male homosexual practices.

At the end of the conference, George Ayala, who is one of the main organizers and a member of the AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), considered that the most important facet of this pre-conference resides in strengthening relations between various groups from all over the world. Its main goal is the creation of collaborative networks which will make everyone's work more efficient and will improve the optimization of resources. However, it is not just a matter of research or social activism. It is more a matter of making this part of the population, which remains invisible in the eyes of many institutions, more evident to governments, organizations,and societies around the world. Dr. Ayala concluded that this event is an example of such an effort.

Check out the current issue, and all back issues of the Global Voice, here.

Brit Chicks I Fancy - live from Mexico City

IRMA's Jim Pickett, coming to you live from Mexico City, at AIDS 2008.

Read his post on the aforementioned chicks aqui... - on the Positively Aware blog. One, btw, is a rather famous female singer, right out of a sweet dream.

[pictured above, Pickett and one of the chicks (at left) with two other very cool lasses, at the TGI Fridays of Mexico -Sanborn's - having a cerveza and some chilequiles - and scheming.)

Check out the conference community blog - some great stuff there.

IRMA in Action - Update and pix from the "Invisible Men" pre-conference in Mexico City

It was a bit of a travel nightmare for IRMA´s Jim Pickett.

Just because he was scheduled to arrive in Mexico City in the late evening of Thursday, July 31 - to be ready to participate and present at the "Invisible Men" pre-conference the following morning - did not make it so. Numerous nail-biting delays and narrowly missed connections meant he was not to arrive in Mexico City until 2pm on Friday, well after the IRMA presentation was supposed to have occurred. Thankfully, the wonderful organizers of the pre-conference (The Global Forum on MSM and HIV) changed the timing of the IRMA workshop for 3:30pm to allow for Pickett´s participation. When he finally arrived at the Sheraton Maria Isabel at 3:45, breathless, unkempt, under-rested and over-caffeinated - anything for attention! - IRMA co-presenters and all around Rectal Superstars Jeremy Kwan, Lanre Onigbogi and Jerry Galea had already gotten the presentation started.

Despite the drama - it ended up being a great workshop - if we must say so ourselves - with some really thoughtful questions from the 30 or so diverse participants - including concerns around ARV-based microbicides, the tension between the vaginal and rectal portions of the field, and how we best determine safety. We hope everyone who joined us for this workshop will go to the IRMA website and sign up to be a part of our expaning rectal empire!

Olivia from TheBody.com was there audio taping the whole thing - so when the link goes live, we will let you know. Thanks Olivia!

A highlight of the workshop (see an earlier post for all the slides), was the official, thrilling unveiling of the translated IRMA report - "Menos Silencio, Más Ciencia"- spearheaded by IRMA-ALC. Hard copies are being distributed at the International AIDS Conference which officially kicks off tomorrow.

It was a real delight to see so many friends from all over the world, IRMA members new and old, to put faces to names we have known for some time, and to meet new, aspiring rectal microbicide advocates!

¡VIVA IRMA!