[tallanvor]

I don't think people with HIV should be stigmatized, but I don't want getting HIV to be normalized. Sure, it's a manageable condition right now, but everyone who has it has to know in the back of their mind that the drugs they use today might not be effective in 5, 10, or 20 years.

I wouldn't have a problem being in a relationship with someone with HIV, but even if his viral load is undetectable, I would still insist on protection for high risk activities.

[rmellow]

The normalisation would work towards allowing the drug companies to be comfortable with a rent-seeking scenario, where they have a huge population that has little choice but to use their services, at whatever cost.

And of course, that might mean an actual cure is detrimental to the bottom line, which might impact funding for any of these studies.

[boyband6666]

Except for the fact that it's expensive to keep people on HIV meds, thus increasing the value of a cure. And the meds are made by lots of companies in competition - if anyone had science they thought would lead to a cure, they would be all over that straight away.

This also assumes that the only motivation is money, if a researcher came up with a cure for HIV they would become an instantaneous scientific god, immortalised in writing, films, having streets and libraries named after them. They would be a hero. That motivation is pretty powerful for many (not for all of those things, but the be a hero part).

[mdhen]

The drugs a specific person is taking today will be effective forever as long as they take them every day as prescribed. Hiv mutates when doses are missed or you take less than 3 drugs to combat it. There exists no future in which hiv drugs we're using today suddenly become ineffective.

A subset of the population will become resistant to certain classes of drugs, because people do stop taking drugs etc. And gain resistance, then pass that on, but for a specific individual their current regimen should be good for as long as they take it. Realistically people change drugs every so often as better drugs with lies side effects are released, but not because of new resistance development.

Now this did used to be a bit if an issue since people had to take multiple pills at different times a day. Having to do that makes missing doses easier, and then resistance can develop. But these days most people are on a single pill taken once a day that completely eliminates that risk.

You're thinking of this like antibiotics, when it's really not a comparable situation.