'People are still afraid of those three letters': Fighting HIV stigma

At the International AIDS Conference in Rio de Janeiro, former rugby star Gareth Thomas — who is HIV positive — stood before an audience of researchers, clinicians, and advocates to bear witness not to a virus, but to the wall of silence and shame that still surrounds it. Decades after the epidemic began, and despite the profound medical advances that have made HIV a manageable condition, the culture has not kept pace with the science. Thomas's public testimony is part of a longer human effort to close that gap — to make honesty about illness something that does not cost a person their place i