CROI 2025: Rebecca Denison gives opening community talk on 40 years of HIV

An important recent change in the CROI programme for the last two years has been to include the Martin Delaney Lecture as part of the opening talks.

The lecture this year was by Rebecca Denison, a writer and activist who talked movingly about her experiences as one of the few women in the US who was able to be open about her HIV status, long before there were effective treatments.

Three days after being diagnosed in 1990 Rebecca saw an ACT UP demonstration hearing the chant, “AIDS is a disaster, women die faster.” She joined immediately, learning quickly about the inequities in HIV including by sex and ethnicity, many of which still persist in America today.

The talk, which is available to watch online, honoured the people who were not able to be at CROI and is set against the background of changes driven by the new US presidency, closing thousands of HIV clinics globally.

“There are still people after all these years who wonder if it would be better to die than have people find out they have HIV. We need to change that.”

Marty Delaney was one of the earliest community activists who founded Project Inform in 1985 in San Francisco and who was honoured with an annual talk at CROI after his death from complications from hepatitis B in 2009.

Rebecca Denison. 40+ Years of HIV: What’s Changed, What Hasn’t, What Shouldn’t, What Must. Martin Delaney Lecture, CROI 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOW2hF2fBqI