A consensus of opinion

It's not what you know but who else knows it.

Sexually transmitted diseases can be extraordinarily divisive. Some will talk freely about the disease process, some will stay silent and some will put aside the scientific discussion and simply react to the situation from their own perspective. Those charged with a role in public health may well react differently from those with a moral agenda, but for those living with the disease the reaction tends to be isolating, unless there is an effective cure at hand to control the spread.

When HIV and AIDS were first recognized as a ‘new’ sexually transmitted disease some 30 years ago, there was no cure and the precautionary restriction of infected healthcare workers (HCW) in the UK was introduced to stop the spread of disease in situations where the infected blood of a clinician might pass to a patient during an exposure-prone procedure (EPP); different categories of risk are recognized. Sadly, the massive transmission of HIV to haemophiliacs who received transfusions of infected blood products arose prior to the introduction of screening of donated blood, which eventually benefited from the same precautionary logic.