Thirty-four years HIV-positive, 27 years spent in prison and 15 of those spent in solitary confinement has not been enough to take away my hope.
And now that I’m two years away from freedom, I have game-changing injectable meds to look forward to (Winter 2023)! Wow! Simply amazing.
My heartfelt thanks to the medical and scientific communities as well as the activists who work on behalf of those of us who are HIV-positive.
For anyone who is discouraged—I have been shot, stabbed, overdosed three times and have spent half my life in prison. If I can deal with being positive, then so can you! This is not the end of our story.
—RICHARD SMITH
Making the cover
A Day with HIV, Positively Aware’s anti-stigma campaign, depicts a single 24-hour period in the lives of people affected by HIV.
OH MAN! Thank you so much! The true story is that I was there on my sofa and saw the A Day with HIV campaign come across my social media. It made me think of how each day of living HIV affects me as a human.
When I first started doing advocacy for “people that looked like me,” l decided I would do it for the human part of HIV because that was the most difficult part I had to deal with. It took a while for me to smile in that sunshine but I am glad I did. I would do the journey all over again. This cover means so much to me!
—MARCO MAYS
THIS CAME in the mail... had no idea! What a pleasant surprise! #Covergirl
—MICHELLE RIGDON
Kidney corrections
Thanks to Nina Martinez, the first kidney donor living with HIV, for correcting three points of fact in “Recipients and donors living with HIV: Transplanting HOPE” (February+March 2024):
The 1984 National Organ Transplant Act didn’t ban the use of organs from donors who had HIV, the 1988 amendment to NOTA did. Thus, the HOPE Act was 25 years in the making, not 30.
Dr. Elmi Muller’s transplants in South Africa began in September 2008, not “early in 2000.” People with HIV didn't start to receive transplanted organs from donors without HIV until the early 2000s.
“Morales would become the second person in the United States to receive a life-saving kidney donation from someone living with HIV.” He is the third.