FIFTY-TWO PUBLIC HEALTH GROUPS DEMAND FACEBOOK REMOVE LATEST ROUND OF 'FRIGHTENING' HIV ADS - newsweek

FIFTY-TWO PUBLIC HEALTH GROUPS DEMAND FACEBOOK REMOVE LATEST ROUND OF 'FRIGHTENING' HIV ADS - newsweek

Fifty-two public health companies and LGBTQ organizations wrote a public letter to Facebook Monday demanding it remove misleading advertisements about HIV prevention medicine.

The posts imply that HIV-negative people could suffer health complications from prevention pills only seen in a shrinking group of HIV-positive people, thus deterring them from treatment, the letter claims.

Advocacy groups say that they're not able to spend a comparable sum on counteradvertising and that Facebook should consider the real-world implications of the ads, which in effect make HIV transmissions more widespread.

Facebook told The Washington Post that its third-party fact-checkers didn't find falsehoods in the campaign, which is largely pushed by private injury attorneys.

Indeed, a component of Truvada, the only Food and Drug Administration–approved prevention medicine for HIV, has been shown to cause kidney failure and bone density problems in people with HIV treated between 2001 and 2015. The ads don't include these details and instead reference Truvada more broadly.

Misleading HIV campaigns are nothing new, according to Rich Ferraro, a spokesperson for GLAAD, the national LGBTQ advocacy group that helped spearhead the letter's demands. He said GLAAD, formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, was founded in the 1980s because of the "misinformation and disgusting coverage of HIV" at the time.

"Since GLAAD's founding almost 35 years ago, we have worked together with other leaders in the HIV and AIDS activism community fighting back against misinformation, factual inaccuracies and stigmatizing ads," Ferraro added.

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