actupny:

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.

[…]

There are nearly 800 life insurers in this country, according to the American Council of Life Insurers. There are no national figures on how many of them have denied coverage to men because they take PrEP.

But insurance brokers, gay-rights advocates and staff at medical clinics said in interviews they had heard of numerous such cases. H.I.V. specialists say the denials endanger men’s lives by encouraging them to drop PrEP if they need life, disability or long-term-care insurance.

HIV stigma is based on bigotry and fear, not facts.