Through the eye of a needle

Abstract

We go on and on learning about AIDS. I first became aware of AIDS when I started reading the early press reports some ten years ago. Eventually I knew of people who were ill because of AIDS, I knew that lovers of friends of mine were ill, and in due course they died. I remember the very first time I saw the skin cancer Kaprosi Sarcoma: it was on the hand of a friend whom I was visiting in Amsterdam. I remember helping in 1987 to light over a thousand votive lights in the Dominican Priory Church at Oxford at an all-night vigil, to represent the current number of people in the United Kingdom known to be HIV Positive, and, of course, those candles also represented those who had died. My experience also included explaining how HIV infection is transmitted (and how it is not), talking about ‘safer sex’, and giving advice about the HIV test.However, nearly two years ago I came to Edinburgh, and in my time there my experience of AIDS has broadened tremendously. I knew nothing about drug abuse whatsoever, although I knew that was how the HIV virus had been spreading so widely in Edinburgh, making it the worst-hit city in Britain after London. I had no idea how relevant my experiences of AIDS and of how it affected gay men in England would be. As it turned out, they were of great value. What, though, I was not prepared for was how AIDS affected children. Of course, gay men have parents and brothers and sisters and grandparents, all of whom are affected in one way or another when someone becomes HIV Positive.