'shocking' ignorance on Aids

A survey of British attitudes to AIDS certainly seems to suggest that there is some ignorance regarding the incidence and the transmission of HIV infection with 11% thinking you could contract it through kissing and 6% through sharing cutlery!But, if the sample was representative of the UK population -which it supposedly was- the fact that a fair proportion of the respondents were idiots should come as no surprise.

The commentators in today's Guardian weren't shocked as much by the dopey brigade as by some of the more generally held views which are matters of opinion (or prejudice if you will) rather than knowledge.

Sixty per cent said they would have more sympathy for someone infected with HIV through a blood transfusion than from promiscuous sex. "This is particularly shocking as it shows that people are making judgments and assigning 'blameworthiness' in their response to the disease. Aids doesn't discriminate - people do," said Patricia Hindmarsh of Marie Stopes International who commissioned the survey of 2,000 representative adults with Interact Worldwide.

This echoes a comment from Alejandra, a woman with HIV featured in 'Women to Women: Positively Speaking' a book with portraits by photographer Mario Testino.

Many women believe that being HIV-positive is because of some wrongdoing. They need to see HIV as just an accident- just as you might have a car accident or lose your job- rather than as something to be blamed for.

When you want to avoid talking about 'responsibility' a good starting point is to rename it 'blame'. But no matter how much you may wish to avoid stigmatising or demonising HIV/AIDS sufferers it does no good to anyone to compare it to being made redundant.

There is 'shocking' ignorance about HIV/AIDS but it is by no means all one way.

More than half - 54% - thought homosexuals were at high risk, but only 26% thought heterosexuals were, even though the fastest rise around the world, including the UK, is now in the heterosexual population.

This is a completely disingenuous. The truth is that the high risk groups in this country are homosexual men, intravenous drug users and individuals who have arrived here from or have visited sub-Saharan Africa and the Far-East.

The risk to other groups, even extremely promiscuous young heterosexuals is insignificant. But to the AIDS zealots the risk is there for everyone regardless of behaviour, lifestyle or geographical location. This is simple untrue and is as distasteful as those misogynistic ads that were running on TV some years agosuggesting (as always) that women were the font of infection and men should beware of their siren calls. In fact men are rarely infected by woman via normal vaginal intercourse. The ads were dropped. The real motivation for running those kinds of adverts was to avoid HIV/AIDS being seen as a 'gay plague'. A perfectly laudable aim but not something that should have rested on disinformation.

Until large numbers of infected people started arriving here from other countries there were, for many years, more people working in the AIDS industry than there were sufferers. There is a whole other argument in there and I'm not getting into it at this point. One thing is certain, however. Ignorance about this subject should be challenged and countered, whether it comes from moronic respondents to questionable surveys or from people in the health community itself. If nothing else it might stop the publication of statements like this:

(The survey) suggests the stigma endured by those with the disease in Britain is as serious an issue as it is at the heart of the pandemic in Africa or Asia.

This is not only utterly ludicrous and ignorant it is also deeply offensive to most of the British population.