In This Issue

Earlier today, I was talking with one of our journalists about how it feels to be back in Durban 15 years after the first International AIDS Conference was held in this city, in this country and on this continent. It's really funny; Durban as a city has not changed a lot in the last 15 years. Of course, South Africa has changed a lot and HIV/AIDS from both a prevention and treatment paradigm is very very different in Africa than it was 15 years ago, when the debate was whether we should offer treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS in sub Saharan Africa. It's hard to imagine that that was, in fact a debatable topic. But in many ways, the energy at this conference is different. The level of energy here is certainly less than it was 15 years ago. So clearly we're in a different place.

The good news is that while this conference could be a conference all about the return of the conquering warriors and a love fest about how far we've come, it has not been. It is possible that one of the things our success has taught us is how important perseverance is and the dire consequences of letting up. To quote the cliché because it's true, we definitely are not where we want to be and where we need to be, but thank god we're not where we used to be.

There is both a sense of determination and loss—not loss as in losing things, but loss as in being lost. Many of us are determined to get to the end game. We are embracing things like the United Nations 90/90/90 goals. But I have to ask the question: If we're successful in reaching these goals, who are the 10 percent who get left behind? For example in the U.S., Black people represent roughly 10 percent of the population. And given the racial dynamics happening in our country today, I don't have complete confidence that achieving the 90/90/90 goals won't mean that AIDS among White people and others might be over, yet we continue to have a raging epidemic in Black communities—and that might be just fine.

That is why it is important to continue to scream from the rooftops that Black Lives Matter. Because in so many corridors, if not reminded, there are huge portions of our society—both in a global conversation and a U.S.-based conversation—that believe that because their lives are fine that everything is fine. That's just not true.

What is not deniable, as Charlize Theron said, is that our actions are clear: The lives of men matter more than women, the lives of adults matter more than children and White lives matter more than Black lives. That is our lived experience. It's our lived experience when it comes to policing and the mass incarceration of Black men in America. It's our lived experience when we look at the disgraceful state of education in the United States. It is apparent when you look at gender disparities around the world. And it's undeniable when you look at the AIDS epidemic, even against the backdrop of remarkable progress.

In this issue, we publish stories about the importance of Black gay men's lives and about the decline in the funding needed to bring the epidemic to an end. I answer a reporter's questions about the relationship between this conference and the end of the epidemic. We share promising research on the monthly vaginal ring for women to reduce women's risk of acquiring HIV. And we interview a drug-policy expert on the relationship between mass incarceration, drug policy and HIV among Black women.

Yours in the struggle,

Phill