At the 15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Boston, David Evans talks with long-term survivor and treatment activist Morris Jackson about conference highlights and the benefits of getting involved. To see the video click here.
David Evans: Hi, this is David Evans for AIDSmeds.com and POZ magazine, here at the 2008 Conferences on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, Massachusetts. With me today, I’m very pleased to have Morris Jackson, who works with the Center for Health Justice in Los Angeles, and is a long-term survivor. He first tested positive in 1989. Sort of related to that, Morris, what is it like to be a long-term survivor, and then to come to a conference like this, with four thousand researchers, they kind of literally have your future in their hands?
Morris Jackson: Well not only my future but my past. A lot of the stuff they’re reporting on, I’ve either lived through or known somebody to experience. It’s a little overwhelming, a little disconcerting, but overall, encouraging.
DE: What’s it like for you to become a treatment activist? Would you recommend that others get involved in a similar fashion?
MJ: Let me answer the second question first: yes, most definitely. I used to be one of those people that didn’t want to know they were positive, didn’t want to know the status, didn’t want to deal with it. But in spite of myself, as time has gone by, the more that I find out, the better prepared I am to participate in my health care. So yeah, that and being an advocate for other people.
DE: Some of the buzz I’ve been hearing in the hallways has been about existing retrovirals, so, drugs like Reyataz (atazanavir), or Kaletra (lopinavir plus ritonavir), or Ziagen (abacavir). And I’m wondering, as you’ve been wandering the halls and attending sessions, what’s caught your eye or attention?
MJ: I guess the things that caught my attention the most was research on the next generation on NNRTIs. It’s been, what, ten years since we’ve had one. That’s probably one of the most exciting things. One of the most interesting things has been the prevention aspect of the conference that I totally didn’t expect.
DE: Yeah, there was a lot more abstracts, a lot more presentations on prevention this year than I think there’s ever been.
MJ: Listening to it and at the same time extrapolating it into the population that I work with has really been rather exciting, so I’m very pleased.
DE: I don’t remember any specific presentations on prevention for people who are incarcerated, but there were a lot of presentations that touched on it. What did you learn about?
MJ: I actually counted yesterday, one of the workshops I went to, incarceration was mentioned eight times in less than fifteen minutes. And I thought that was absolutely fabulous for lack of a better word.
DE: Because for so long, people who are incarcerated were the forgotten population that no one wants to pay attention to.
MJ: It’s now becoming apparent that, working with the incarcerated population, it’s part of public health. And I think that had been too far on the back burner until now.
DE: Dr. Adamora was talking about the impact of HIV on the African American community, and she cited a statistic that African American men were something like forty-four times as likely to be incarcerated for the very same crime as their white counterparts, and what kind of a devastating role that has had on the community, and particularly HIV.
MJ: Something else interesting that she said yesterday was that an African American male born today had a twenty-nine percent chance of being incarcerated over a lifetime, so I never knew that or thought about that. But to address your issue, it has a devastating effect on the community, but she explained it in ways that I’d never actually imagined it. Obviously there’s the sex component, but the financial ramifications and increased poverty, all of which play into susceptibility for infection.
DE: And also it looked like segregation; people condensed into a set of neighborhoods that have all kinds of varying risks, are thrown together, which isn’t as common in Caucasians I guess.
MJ: There’s the theory of the gay ghetto, but then there was a presentation yesterday that it’s disappearing because of the internet, so it all ties in together. That was probably one of the most fascinating things I’ve been to here.
DE: In that set of presentations there was a gentleman who was showing us some examples of the innovative strategies people are using online. Some of them included—people could practice chatting, there was another one where people had avatars, you know, examples, where they could follow through a lot of risk decisions. There was also a sort of, ‘how hot is he’ calculator. Do you remember that one?
MJ: Yes, and I looked it up and said, oh my god he really is naked. That and, well my coworkers do a lot more than I do, negotiation skills, how to negotiate safer sex. To be able to have those tools available, or at least be able to practice those skills on the internet I think is absolutely wonderful.
DE: One last question: as someone who does work in both jails and prisons, or mostly the jails?
MJ: Mostly the jails right now.
DE: So as someone who works in the jails—how important is it to work with people before their release, in terms of their likelihood to stay safe, stay off drugs, stay away from crime when they get out?
MJ: Rephrase your question again? I got stuck on the word ‘likelihood’ I think.
DE: Okay. Basically, if we don’t do anything with people in jails, and we don’t go in there and talk to them about HIV prevention, and we don’t talk about substance use and the impact of going back into their community, what kind of negative effect is that having, compared to the work you’re doing where you do go in and you do work with people?
MJ: Okay. A great deal of the time because of the recidivism rate because of substance abuse or mental illness or whatever, sometimes jail is a revolving door. And there are days when I feel like if I can just plant a seed—and it may not germinate then, it may not grow—but if I can at least plant a seed and let them know that there are resources available for treatment for substance abuse, for HIV, that they can get out and get help if they help themselves. I think it’s terribly important.
DE: So it sounds like for our viewers if they want to become involved in treatment activism, they can, and I know you know how to do that, and you can tell them a little bit about that. But it sounds like, as a person living with HIV, coming to a scientific conference like this doesn’t have to be intimidating, and that you can actually leave recharged and reenergized.
MJ: You can leave recharged, energized, and a bit overwhelmed, and a lot of it is intimidating; I don’t have science background, I’m not a science geek. But I think I’m turning into one. If you’re just open and you hear stuff over and over again enough, some of it sinks it, and eventually most of it does; I’m living proof of that.
DE: Well thanks so much for talking with us today and I hope you have a great conference.
MJ: Thank you, I appreciate it.
