Emily O'Reilly

So there was this sort of narrative.

It did seem out of time at the time, you know, because, you know, most people who if they tune into issues around HIV at all will think, well, it's over now.

That was in the past.

And they have these drugs and everybody lives as long as anybody, everybody else.

But Brian hadn't.

And anyway, the more I dug, and I didn't have to dig that deeply, the more I discovered this link between accelerated ageing and HIV, which basically means that your biological clock...

outstrips your chronological clock or the other way around.

Anyway, you age faster than most people.

So the diseases that you might typically get in your 70s or 80s, you get them a decade or so earlier.

Now, I had to be very careful about this because I forgot to do a degree in science and a degree in medicine.

But I looked through lots of scientific records, papers and so on.

And you just Google accelerating ageing and HIV and there it is.

And what happens, there's a dispute over whether it's accelerated ageing or accentuated ageing.

And your program is too short for me to tell the difference between that, but it amounts to the same thing ultimately.

And it's as if, imagine you're...

body is like a, your immune system is like a washing machine or a household appliance.

And imagine it's going 24-7, you know, the whole time.

It's going to wear out a hell of a lot faster than if you're just using it at the weekend.

And Brian's immune system had been going at peak rate since the time he got it.

And then the time he was waiting for the drugs and then on some of the early drugs.