Forty-four per cent of Americans disagree with the scientific fact that a person living with HIV on effective treatment cannot pass it on sexually. That finding comes from GLAAD’s sixth annual State of HIV Stigma report, released on 20 August with Gilead Sciences, based on a survey of 2,500 adults.
By Marvin Valdez
What U=U Actually Means
Effective HIV treatment suppresses the virus until it can no longer be detected in the blood. At that point it cannot be passed on through sex. Undetectable equals untransmittable, shortened to U=U. It is not a hopeful theory. It has been the scientific position since the Prevention Access Campaign launched in 2016. Ten years on, close to half the American public still will not accept it.
Gen Z Is Going Backwards
Only 31% of Gen Z adults say they feel knowledgeable about HIV, against 60% of Gen X. In GLAAD’s 2024 report, the Gen Z figure was 37%. It has dropped six points in two years.
The most out generation in history knows less about HIV than it did when it was younger.
That is both surprising and troubling
Comfort has slipped as well. Sixty-one per cent of respondents feel comfortable around a family member living with HIV, down from 66% in 2024. Only 45% feel comfortable with a doctor living with HIV, down from 50%.
The report calls this an invisibility paradox.
Seventy-two per cent of Americans have seen no stories about real people living with HIV in the past year, up from 66% in 2024. GLAAD counted a single LGBTQIA+ character living with HIV across the 2024 to 2025 television season, and that character is not coming back. Of 225 major studio films analysed, one had a character living with HIV, Fairyland, and it was set in the early years of the epidemic.
“Stigma did not disappear. It evolved,” said Terrance Hunter of 26Health, who sits on GLAAD’s Community HIV Stigma Advisory Committee.
The survey was fielded in January 2025, so these attitudes are 18 months old but reported as current. The study is funded by Gilead Sciences, which sells HIV prevention and treatment medicines. The findings line up with independent trend data, but readers deserve to know who paid.
What Funded Messaging Looks Like
Australia recorded 757 new HIV diagnoses in 2024, down 27% since 2015, according to the Kirby Institute. PrEP has been subsidised on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme since 2018, and more than 97,000 people have used it. Of Australians on treatment, 98% have a suppressed viral load. Meanwhile the United States has just lost roughly $600 million in terminated CDC prevention grants, and 32 states still enforce HIV criminalisation laws.
Australia is not finished either. The national HIV Taskforce still lists spreading the U=U message to the wider public as unfinished business.
