Bay Area Reporter - April 20, 2001
Jeff Getty, Survive AIDS Writers Pool

It's time to dump Poz. Many activists involved in HIV case manager training programs have long known the dangers of so-called treatment magazines stuffed full of drug company advertisements. Many of these magazines and newsletters (Poz included) only exist to display these ads in the first place. One must be highly suspect of any treatment advice found within their pages, and good case manager training curriculum warns PWAs not to take medical advice from such periodicals.

Yet Poz entices us with their youngish cover models and provocative headlines. We want to throw it away, but we feel compelled to just take a peek before pitching it in the trash. What we find is the usual disappointing New York-centric queenish, tatty writing. "It's sort of like Genre for AIDS," remarked one Survive AIDS member at a recent meeting. While mucking past endless HIV drug ads with their accompanying pages of fine print (warning: may cause death) that can only be read with bifocals, we find the occasional gem, the Poz story to tell us why certain idiots prefer to bareback as a matter of course and how wonderfully round and bubble-like Spencer Cox's ass has become in recent years. If you find yourself quickly thumbing through Poz while holding it over a trash can - you are not alone. Let it fall.

And in case you are involved in treatment access and real issues that have to do with PWAs and HIV-positive survival, don't bother with Poz's news reporting. They decide what is important. Of course that all has to do with what is "in" in New York City that month. Poz is like a fashion review, only it has attached itself to a terminal illness. It took them nearly a year to cover HIV-positive organ transplantation and even then wrote less than 200 words on the subject. Organ failure, often aggravated by HIV drugs, is a leading cause of death among PWAs - a fact left out of the glamorous drug ads. Tacky would be a kind word to describe Poz. Irresponsible and completely sold-out are more accurate descriptions.

Poz was the strange media child of Sean Strub and AIDS. You may recall that Strub made a fortune off selling gay folk's names and addresses to corporate America back in the 1980s. Strub sold gay names to everyone - including the religious right. And Poz carries on that tradition as well. While you are receiving your free copy of Poz, you can bet that drug companies and countless other marketers are receiving vital research information about you. And then there is the Poz Expo. One cannot enter a Poz Expo unless he or she hands over his full name and address. The cost of admission is merely your privacy. Some turn away from the expo for this reason.

But what prompted this long-overdue column was a recent USA Today article where we saw Poz reveal its true prostitute-like nature; coming to the defense of drug companies responsible for misleading HIV drug ads that depict PWAs as healthy, sexy, mountain-climbing, horseback-riding athletes. In an April 6 USA Today article, "Ads linked to rise in rate of HIV infections, City considers ban on drug billboards," Poz publisher Brad Peebles answers the charge that HIV drug ads lead to unsafe sex: "This is one tiny blip in the consciousness of people choosing to engage in risky behavior," he said. "It's fueled by alcoholism, by drugs, by the bars, by the phone lines and Internet cruising." The article goes on to say: "Peebles says he doesn't think that the ads 'will encourage people to have unsafe sex or be more careless.' The drug companies, he adds, "aren't responsible for keeping people [HIV] negative."

So now a magazine publisher (who happens to earn lots of cash selling these ads) has an important idea about the epidemiology of AIDS and what goes on in the mind of persons having unsafe sex. With no credentials or data to back him up, Peebles suddenly knows more about such influences than S.F. public health experts, HIV prevention researchers, and others who study the causes of unsafe sex. Surely such things that pay his salary could not be responsible. And most surprising - if not shocking - is that Brad Peebles also knows that the drug companies aren't responsible for keeping people HIV-negative. Shouldn't such comments (if true or otherwise) be coming from the drug companies themselves? Poz, which once spoke for people with AIDS, now speaks for the drug companies. And when it came time for Poz to report the breaking story about HIV drug ads possibly leading to unsafe sex? There was nothing, no Poz reporters calling for interviews for a story that was covered by all major media outlets in the U.S. and internationally.

Since he was seemingly speaking for the drug companies, Peebles might have mentioned another important detail: Telling people that an HIV-infected lifestyle - taking the wonderful HIV drugs - will be pretty and fun, might increase new HIV infections, and therefore more drug sales. Oh no! They couldn't be doing that. Could they?

At the recent hearing on the issue in S.F. City Hall, we saw no drug company employees willing to be recognized, speak out, or start a dialogue. Instead they apparently tried to disguise themselves while lurking in the hallway and the back of the committee room. Enter A&U magazine's editor, David Wagoner. In the last issue of this drug company-sponsored AIDS magazine, Wagoner tells us that we should not side with African countries trying to make their own drugs, but instead, back up our friends in the drug industry to protect those patents and money so that better drugs can be researched. This is the price we pay for these ads and their revenue - being sold out by the likes of A&U and Poz. Might want to also dump A&U while you're at it. Or better yet call Wagoner and tell him he sucks.

Do people with AIDS really need the likes of drug company mouthpieces disguised as magazines? Many say no.

It has been said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. It follows that there is no free Poz either. We are paying for Poz in more ways than one. Perhaps if we all stopped reading it and told them to stop sending it, Poz might go away. Perhaps not, because we didn't ask for it in the first place.

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Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2001. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

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