Hier een artikel over deze zaak, overgenomen van de Financial Times. De link naar het artikel werkt soms wel dan weer niet, vandaar het hele artikel:
December 30, 2015 12:01 am
UK national archives: Thatcher sought to tone down campaign warning about Aids
Emily
Cadman and Kate Allen
Health
secretary Norman Fowler in front of a poster reading 'Aids - Don't
Die Of Ignorance' in November 1986
Margaret
Thatcher personally intervened to try to tone down what her advisers
saw as “distasteful” adverts warning about the dangers of
HIV/Aids.
As
her government began to grapple with the emerging public health
crisis, newly
declassified files reveal
the tension between doctors’ advice to place advertising frankly
discussing sexual behaviour and the prime minister’s concern that
such details would offend people.
In February 1986 David Willetts, an adviser to Thatcher and later a minister in David Cameron’s government, sent a memo warning that Norman Fowler, health secretary, was “proposing to place explicit and distasteful advertisements about Aids in all the Sunday papers”.
He
concluded the “problem is now so serious that we must do as he
proposes”. However, Thatcher scribbled on the memo comments such
as: “Do we have to have the section on risky sex? I should have
thought it could do immense harm if young teenagers were to read it.”
Health
officials around the world were scrambling to deal with the threat of
HIV/Aids, which had emerged in the US only a few years before.
In
late 1986, the government estimated that 30,000 people in Britain
were already infected, with 10 to 20 people being infected every day.
With no cure, the concern was that these numbers could rapidly spiral
into the hundreds of thousands.
The
tension between delivering effective public health advice and the
fear of giving offence — for example, through references to anal
sex — crop up throughout the papers. At one point, Thatcher checked
for assurances that the proposed advertisements would not fall foul
of the Obscene Publications Act.
Despite her reluctance, public health officials were adamant, with the chief medical officer insisting that passages on avoiding the riskiest sexual practices “contained the essences of the message that he needed to get across; and that in his professional judgment their inclusion in the publicity was vital”.
While
Thatcher eventually backed down about the content of the adverts,
she later refused Mr Fowler’s request for a ministerial broadcast
to explain the campaign as “not appropriate”. The ensuing public
health campaign was run out of the Cabinet Office, not Number 10.
The
following year, the unprecedented health campaign was launched with
a leaflet drop to every household accompanied by hard-hitting TV
adverts with the image of the word “Aids” being chiselled on to
a tombstone and the slogan: “Don’t die of ignorance.”
At
the time, misconceptions about Aids were rife. Many believed it
could be caught from toilet seats or was confined to gay men, drug
abusers or haemophiliacs who had received tainted blood
transfusions.
The
campaign, with its clear message that risky sexual behaviour put
anyone at risk, was widely
credited as
having helped slow the spread of the disease and was imitated by
several other countries.
A
notable impact was also registered on other sexually transmitted
infections: the number of diagnoses of gonorrhoea in England and
Wales dropped from about 50,000 in 1985 to 18,000 in 1988.
In
contrast, concerns are growing today that cases
of STDs are again rising in the UK among
a generation who do not remember the hard-hitting campaigns of the
1980s.
Wat een geweldige politicus was het hè, die Thatcher........
Voor meer berichten n.a.v. het voorgaande, klik op één van de labels, die u onder dit bericht terugvindt. Dit geldt niet voor de labels Fowler en Willets.Mijn excuus voor de opmaak, deze is op de site van de F.T. wel in orde.
