Posted on February 12, 2018
Source: The New York Times
"Three years ago, Dr. Philip J. Cheng, a urology resident at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, nicked himself while preparing an H.I.V.-positive patient for surgery.
Following hospital protocol, he took a one-month course of Truvada, a cocktail of two anti-H.I.V. drugs, to prevent infection. Later, because he was an unattached gay man, he decided to keep taking Truvada to protect himself from getting H.I.V. through sex.
The practice — called PrEP, short for pre-exposure prophylaxis — is safe and highly effective. Several studies have shown that users who take the drug daily are at nearly zero risk of H.I.V. infection.
But when Dr. Cheng applied for disability insurance — which many young doctors do to protect a lifetime’s worth of income should they be hurt — he was told that, because he was taking Truvada, he could have only a five-year policy."
