ABSTRACT
Before the advent of HIV and AIDS in the early 1980s, no one used the phrase ‘safe sex’. Whatever could that mean? Yet, by the mid-1980s, that phrase represented the only global response with any effect to the fast-growing and devastatingly lethal pandemic unfolding before the astonished eyes of the world. Gay men invented safe sex and they did this with little medical or scientific evidence to support it. That would come later. Safe sex worked well in stemming many epidemics in various countries and remains the primary, affordable and accessible HIV prevention method the world has in many places. Now, other methods are increasingly available and seek primacy in the global response to the pandemic. What has happened to safe sex? This chapter explores the history and origins of, and state of play for, safe sex. Gay men created it; are gay men currently leading its demise?
