Sorry, Don F.

Keith selects facts and opinions to support his prejudices. They often prove to be wrong.

Keith believes - he has told us this on a number of occasions - that he believes that the reason HIV affects different groups is because some people - gay men and black people - have sexual behaviour that "brings the disease on themselves, whereas white and straight people are protected by their higher, better standards of behaviour.

He tries to ignore that his own preferred experts deny this; and state rightly that diseases spread in, and can remain largely contained within, sexual networks. Gay people don't have sex with straight people and so largely keep their HIV misfortune to themselves. Ditto for recent African immigrants - although that group *might* be more "leaky" into the general heterosexual population, for fairly obvious presumptive reasons.

Straight white sexually-active people in their local nightlcub sexual networks are quite happily spreading other STI's by their unprotected sexual encounters - evidence by infection rates way above the HIV infection rate in gay men or in black people. The straight/white kids are simply epidemiologically lucky that HIV has not be introduced into their network. The individuals are fortunate - the reason they are fortunate is simple science.

But Keith will carry on saying that it isn't so. For the sake of his own agenda.

Or alternatively he will deny everything I have been saying and start prattling on about statistics again, which are irrelevant to this discussion about *why* some groups are at greater risk than others of contracting HIV.

My money is on the tired old statistics again.

We finished this a couple of weeks ago, and I partly regret letting Keith drag me back in. I should have left to his hand-job.