AVAC Report 2017: Mixed Messages and How to Untangle Them

In this year's AVAC Report—Mixed Messages and How to Untangle Them—we have set ourselves the task of clarifying the profoundly complex field of biomedical HIV prevention and research. This is never an easy task, but it is made all the more complicated— and exciting—in the current environment.

One definition of "mixed message" is "a showing of thoughts or feelings that are very different from one another." Based on this, the term "biomedical prevention" is itself a mixed message, since it suggests that there are prevention strategies that can be extricated from the messy reality of human behavior, social relations and structural arrangements that preserve and exacerbate inequalities. As the Global Forum on MSM & HIV points out, all biomedical options are fundamentally social in that they involve relationships with our bodies, partners, clinics, communities and countries.