Letter: Right response to Aids

Sir: Bryan Appleyard's article on Aids ('Just an illness with big ideas', 21 April) almost defies rational analysis. What, if anything, is he really trying to say?

On the one hand, he seems to be saying that Aids can now be dismissed as a remote affliction of dispossessed and deviant peoples somewhere else. On the other hand, he says that 'so long as the rich continue to take the right precautions', they will have nothing to fear.

There is a profound contradiction here: he is saying at the same time that Aids is insignificant and vitally important to know about. But if his first point is accepted, then how is the second to be guaranteed?

The fact is that HIV and Aids are not in the least likely to disappear for the foreseeable future. Many people actually owe their lives to such efforts as have already been made to inform and persuade people and institutions to act to reduce the risk of transmission.

Finally, although there is still no satisfactory medical solution, the massive, continuing and productive scientific response to Aids is the exact opposite of the 'technological pessimism' Bryan Appleyard considers to have been characteristic of our response to this natural disaster.

Yours sincerely,

JULIAN MELDRUM

Research and Information Officer

National Aids Trust

London, SE1

21 April