ANOTHER VOICE
The Big Lie which threatens to clean up the world
AUBERON WAUGH
Some time ago I vowed never to men- tion the dread name of Aids in the Specta- tor again. I had pointed to its electoral possibilities which rely on the correct timing of a mammoth Aids scare, and given Spectator readers all the information they needed about the fragility of the rectal passage as against the toughness of the vaginal wall in transmission of the virus. Anything further might have looked like prurience, or gloating, or fishing for a pension from the makers of Durex. However, since the Greenwich by-election result has made everybody suppose that the general election will be later rather than sooner (although I am not sure why), this seems a good time to nail the Big Lie about Aids which threatens to have far- reaching effects in many walks of life.
In its most extreme form, the Big Lie finds expression in the mouth of Dr Everett Koop, the United States Surgeon- General, who has prophesied that the Aids virus, if unchecked, will kill 100 million people, world-wide, by the year 2000. This prophecy was prefaced by a somewhat unctuous disclaimer — 'I cannot indulge in the luxury of what I feel as an individual. I have to speak as a medical officer' — and delivered to 5,500 students, many clutching Bibles, at the Revd Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, a Christian fundamentalist in- stitution at Lynchburg, Virginia, He urged `chastity, monogamy and marriage'.
Dr Koop, needless to say, is a born- again Christian. He claims that four per cent of American Aids victims caught the disease through heterosexual intercourse. Even if this figure could stand as represent- ing normal heterosexual intercourse — as opposed to anal intercourse in which, according to the authorities, 20 per cent of American women have at one time in- dulged — it would scarcely represent a serious threat to the lifestyle of American students, who have been copulating in their millions every day for as long as most people can remember.
The Big Lie about Aids is in the pretence that there is any evidence to suggest it could ever become a major health hazard in the Western world outside the 'high risk' areas of homosexuals, heterosexual sodomists, drug abusers and recipients of blood through plasma or conventional transfusion. A second, slightly less Big Lie may concern the extent of its prevalence in Central Africa, although I lack the in- formation to be certain about that, as does everyone else. The only black African country to have produced figures is Ugan- da (which, of all countries in the world, might be most sensitive). Uganda has announced 766 confirmed cases — fewer than France or Germany. In any event, as the World Health Organisation points out, five million children die every year from diarrhoea. Dr Koop had nothing to say to students of Liberty College about this affliction. We do not read of the Queen sending for Mr Fowler and lecturing him on its dangers or of massive advertising on the subject.
It was Dr Koop, as Surgeon-General,' who launched the great persecution of smokers in the United States by announc- ing he had proof that lung cancer could be caused by secondary or 'passive' smoking. Never mind that there is not a shred of evidence for this, or that most of the evidence points in the opposite direction. It might explain the inconvenient fact that despite a 45 per cent drop in cigarette consumption in the last 15 years, death from cancer of the throat, bronchus and lungs continues its steady, unspectacular increase, and that a growing proportion of these deaths are among non-smokers.
My correspondent Mr Humphrey Brooke has a well-documented argument to suggest that the smoking scare and the alcohol scare, both being promoted active- ly by elements in the DHSS and the medical profession,, are in fact inspired by the multi-million-pound pharmaceutical in- dustry. Alcohol and tobacco threaten their enormous sales of tranquillisers and anti- depressant drugs, he believes, having been a victim of these dangerous poisons himself at one time. He points to Churchill, himself a sufferer from the black dog of recurrent depression, who kept it at bay on a diet of brandy, champagne and cigars and lived to 90. 'Behind medico-psychiatric wrongheadedness there is often a deeply puritanical hatred of pleasure,' he writes.
Nobody can doubt that there is big money behind attempts to pretend that Aids is a much more threatening disease than it is. Obviously, there are many other motives as well. If it is emphasised that 85 per cent of Aids victims continue to be male homosexuals, and that the threat to ordinary heterosexuals is almost non- existent, there might be a worse stigma attaching both to the illness and to the practice of homosexuality. That is some- thing which a compassionate society wishes to avoid. Moreoever, if heterosexual promiscuity is something which people feel should be discouraged, whether for social, psychological or religious reasons, what harm is done if we allow the Bible- thumpers, puritans and sexual inadequates to exaggerate the risks in this way?
Newspapers and television would have motive enough to sensationalise the dis- ease even if the Government did not propose to spend millions of pounds adver- tising it. But the real money is in phar- maceuticals. Last week, on news of further Government money for research, Well- come shares put on 55p, Glaxo 67p and even Smith and Nephew (surgical gloves) put on 4p. On rumours, which proved false, of an effective viricidal agent BTP Barrow Hepburn put on 70p and LIG, the Durex Group, lost 20p.
As always, it is Government money they are after. Next Wednesday — 11 March has been declared National No Smoking Day, an enterprise which has received £60,000 of subsidy from a government which also gives £200,000 a year to Ash, the hysterical and unpleasant anti-smoking group. This same government receives £5.5 billion a year in tobacco duty — enough to pay for half the entire hospital service.
If a small proportion of the money being poured into research and publicity for Aids were spent on nursing its unfortunate victims, nobody could possibly complain. But that would not be so profitable for the pharmaceutical industry. Presumably the industry does not really mind whether its money comes from Aids, nervous tension or whooping cough. Might it not turn its attention to the ever-present problems of diarrhoea among children?
My objection to the Aids scare is only partly an objection to seeing puritanism triumph on the strength of a Big Lie. If it is a good thing for the oldest profession to disappear, the massage parlours to close down and young people to stop copulating because these things are socially undesir- able, and unpleasing in the sight of God, then it should happen for that reason, not as the result of lies put around by the pharmaceutical industry and a few reli- gious fanatics in the medical profession. Oddly enough, I feel particularly sorry for the young. It is not as if the poor beggars will have much else to do.
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