Retired Constitutional Court justice Edwin Cameron remembers a time when an HIV diagnosis was effectively a death sentence — when gay men were dying “in their tens of thousands” and doctors could offer little more than palliative care.

Today, at 73, Cameron is living proof of the life-saving power of antiretroviral therapy (ARVs). But his medical chart — three heart stents, high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation — also reflects what researchers are now uncovering: people living with HIV are ageing faster and developing chronic illnesses at far higher rates than those without the virus.

His story spans the darkest days of the epidemic, the activism that forced change, and the new scientific frontier of understanding what it means to grow old with HIV. 

Guest: Justice Edwin Cameron: Retired Constitutional Court Judge