All the Other Stuff: Treatment as Prevention and the Embodiment of Undetectability

The "Treatment as Prevention (TasP)" campaign advocates extended undetectability-untransmissibility (U = U) as a means to "End the Epidemic" of HIV/AIDS. Drawing on ethnographic research in Buenos Aires (Argentina), I identify three issues that prevail in overly-optimistic discourses associated with TasP, which: overshadow the history of HIV and antiretrovirals; overlook the inherent dynamism of undetectability; and understand antiretrovirals as technical tools with predictable effects, regardless of context. I address how undetectability becomes embodied in the lives of pre-HAART survivors while underscoring the diversity of challenges faced in a Latin American country with universal and free-of-charge access to antiretroviral therapy.