On June 24, 1972, three boys decided to leave their residential school in Canada’s Northwest Territories and walk from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk (“Tuk”) in a bid to avoid punishment for stealing a pack of cigarettes from their dorm supervisor. Without a highway connecting Inuvik to Tuk, the boys had no idea they were undertaking an […]
HIV
Posted inEditor's Pick
America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic
Ground zero in the AIDS crisis happened on June 5th, 1981, when the C.D.C.’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report identified five cases of pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) in previously healthy white men in Los Angeles. The sixth case — a gay African-American man who had contracted PCP and cytomegalovirus — went undocumented and that critical omission […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Nyet to Harm Reduction: Russia’s HIV Epidemic
In Yekaterinburg, the fourth largest city in Russia, one in 50 are HIV positive, half of which are due to intravenous drug use.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Why Russia’s Heroin Addicts Are Going Through Hell
Russia’s aversion to harm reduction as a strategy to combat drug addiction has led to an HIV epidemic. In Yekaterinburg — the fourth largest city in Russia with a population of 1.5 million people — one in 50 are HIV positive. In Russia, addiction is considered a “moral sickness” and methadone is illegal — “a […]
Posted inUncategorized
What it’s like to be one half of a couple where one partner is HIV positive, and the other is not: We go to the mall and spend too much. We go to multiplexes and laugh at bad horror movies. We scrape by, for several months, on turkey sandwiches and canned soup and whatever meals […]