Keith: I am sure it did ,but is quite reasonable to suppose that a more focussed programme might have done more good.
(At one point you claimed it responsible for the epidemic not hitting the straight community but did not explain why it did not save gay men.)

Well that's not really correct, Keith. I asserted that the universal education programs have kept the incidence of HIV low in this country. I did not make any differentiation between the effect universal education programs had on different groups, but I say that if those programs had not existed then we would have had a far greater heterosexual HIV problem than we do. You should infer from that my view that the male-to-male incidence would be higher also.

The incidence of HIV in this country is incredibly low - whether you are gay or straight - compared to countries where little or no education programs were in place at the time the disease emerged.

So it is reasonable to assert that, whatever group you look at, universal education programs play an important role. Targeted education/intervention is even more important and we are actually very good at it in this country.

What is scary about the current position is that an awful lot of resouces are being directed, rightly, at the at-risk groups. It is working. Maybe more could be done, I don't know for sure.

But the pool of heterosexual carriers in this country is fairly rocketing, at the same time the numbers of teenage pregnancies, abortions and other STI's are climbing, suggesting a tendency (maybe even a growing tendency) for straight people not to use condoms, while contracting risk-multiplying STI's in a community with an ever-increasing number of HIV carriers. A problem in the making, isn't it?