But it's not been easy. And also fighting those who want to take advantage of your situation. Juan has especially mixed feelings about protease inhibitors. He worries that they have created an impression among the general public that HIV disease has become a manageable chronic health condition and that AIDS service organizations no longer need money. He worries that people are having unsafe sex because they think protease inhibitors are an antidote to the virus.
People are less careful.
They don't know how hard it is to do this. They don't know the side effects of the drugs. Taking forty pills every day can destroy the liver, stomach, pancreas, etc. It's very difficult to live like this and take these pills. Unwilling to be part of an experiment, and worried about developing resistance, Juan himself resisted taking the cocktail for a long time, and his present relationship with his protease inhibitors is not trouble-free.