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Paper short abstract:

PrEP, billed as a pill a day to prevent HIV, has emerged as a key component of global efforts to achieve "the end of AIDS." This paper draws on ethnographic research about a PrEP trial in progress in Indonesia to consider the relationship between scientific objects and social subjects.

Paper long abstract:

PrEP, billed as a pill a day to prevent HIV, has emerged as a key component of efforts to accelerate the epidemic control response and meet the global target of the "end of AIDS" by 2030. Governments reliant on international donor funding for HIV programs are now encouraged to incorporate PrEP into HIV programs for MSM, transgender women and other "key populations" assessed as meeting a specific risk profile. In April 2022, Indonesia commenced a long-delayed demonstration trial for PrEP. Patients meeting a specific risk profile could obtain a 30-day supply of a single pill of generic Truvada from public clinics in 21 clinics in 12 provinces. Emerging out of longstanding research about HIV in Indonesia underway since 2014, this paper draws on ethnographic data collected from the period since the PrEP trial began in April 2022, including participant observation in webinars, training and consultation meetings, grey literature, and interviews. Kane Race described PrEP as a "reluctant object," a status conferred by its, "putative association with the supposed excesses of unbridled sex" (2016, 6). Building on his insight, this paper asks: what theoretical frameworks at the intersection of STS and queer theory might be gleaned from addressing an emergent PrEP trial in Indonesia? An ethnography of a PrEP trial in progress reveals how the biomedicalisation of HIV prevention both transforms the temporal horizon of living with HIV in Indonesia and reflects dynamic relations between scientific objects and social subjects in light of ongoing forms of colonial, racial and economic inequality.