In an open letter to Facebook, LGBTQ groups and HIV organizations have asked the popular social networking website to remove “factually inaccurate” HIV PrEP ads that are causing imminent danger to the public health.
The Facebook HIV PrEP ads placed by law firms suggest that the medication Truvada, which is prescribed as pre-exposure prophylaxis, has negative health effects.
The letter states, “The advertisements are targeting LGBTQ Facebook and Instagram users, and are causing significant harm to public health. The law firms’ advertisements are scaring away at-risk HIV negative people from the leading drug that blocks HIV infections.”
Various law firms bought the ads to use Facebook’s targeted advertising capabilities in order to recruit gay and bisexual men for a class-action lawsuit against Gilead Sciences.
Gilead Sciences manufactures Truvada, a combination of emtricitabine, tenofovir, and disoproxil fumarate, which is to be taken once a day. According to the CDC, Truvada has been found 99 percent effective at preventing HIV transmission.
The letter claims that the ads are misleading people by giving the wrong impression that Truvada is harmful and causes side effects on using the drug for a longer duration.
A spokesperson for Facebook wrote, “While these ads do not violate our ad policies nor have they been rated false by third-party fact-checkers, we’re always examining ways to improve and help these key groups better understand how we apply our policies.”
PrEP4All co-founder Peter Staley said he was immediately concerned as soon as he started seeing the ads on Facebook in September. He said, “For the last six months, they’ve been targeting gay men on Facebook and Instagram with visuals about PrEP, the word PrEP and the blue pill, which is very iconic now for PrEP users. They’re scaring the s**t out of anybody who’s seeing them.”
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Deputy Commissioner of Disease Control at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, told NBC News, “We’re all seeing and hearing the same thing, which is that this has a pretty significant chilling effect on trying to get folks on to pre-exposure prophylaxis, especially in communities that already have a baseline issue with medical trust.”
“I’ve had my patients coming in to see me saying, ‘Hey, should we be switching me off of Truvada on to something else?’ It’s really frustrating,” he added.
The United States has been lagging behind when it comes to preventing HIV by using PrEP medication. A recent CDC report has found that only 18 percent of more than 1 million Americans, who may be benefited from the drug, actually received a prescription.
Staley explained that it could be due to the high cost of Truvada in the United States, which costs around $2,000 for a month’s supply. He also noted that there is a lack of trust in the new medicine and of course, misinformation. “Our worst nightmare is coming true because these ads are definitely sending us back,” said Staley.
