From: 'The Retreat From Reason:   
   Political Correctness and the Corruption of Public Debate in Modern Britain'   
      
      
   Political Correctness over Factual Correctness.   
      
   African immigrants were responsible for the exponential rise in HIV in   
   England. Govt and the media went into deinal over it. Govt implemented a   
   pointless policy (aimed at white heteros) when it knew full well it was   
   African immigrants with HIV who were responsible for the rise. Govt and   
   media later changed its stance.   
      
   Quotes. Browne's interview on Today on the subject was dropped by Naughtie   
   in favour of a policy statement from the govt.   
      
   He writes:   
      
   'The interview on the Today programme was on a   
   highly sensitive subject-the exponential rise of HIV in   
   Britain since Labour was elected in 1997. Figures from the   
   government's Public Health Laboratory Service were   
   being published showing a 25 per cent rise in just one   
   year, with almost all the increase being among hetero-sexuals.   
   The government and media had been warning for   
   years about the dangers of the new complacency among   
   heterosexuals, ever since the number of heterosexual cases   
   had swept past the number of homosexual ones, a well   
   reported and much commented-on phenomenon. The   
   government minister was responding on the Today prog-ramme   
   to the latest increase with a new sexual health   
   campaign telling people to practice safe sex. If teenagers   
   would just wear condoms, it would put a stop to the rise.   
   But the trouble is that the increase in HIV had virtually   
   nothing to do with British people practicing unsafe sex-it   
   was almost all the result of HIV positive people (mainly   
   Africans) coming to the UK, and being diagnosed with   
   HIV once here.   
   I first wrote about the issue in a front page story in The   
   Times, announcing that African immigration had over-taken   
   gay sex as the main source of new HIV cases in   
   Britain, according to government figures. The govern-ment's   
   epidemiologists with whom I had worked on the   
   story had been worried about the reaction. They needn't   
   have bothered. The reaction was incredulity. Clearly, in   
   most people's minds, the story couldn't be true-everyone   
   knew the increase in HIV was because of complacent and   
   promiscuous Britons.   
   *The only people who phoned me up to thank me about   
   it were HIV doctors, who lived in the real world, not the   
   politically correct virtual one. Their patients were now   
   predominantly (and sometimes exclusively) African immi-grants,   
   and yet no one was talking about it. Some doctors   
   told me that when they had tried to bring it up in public   
   with their local health authorities, they had just been   
   shouted at.*   
   One of the government's own medical advisers phoned   
   me up secretly from within the Department of Health   
   thanking me for highlighting the issue, and urging me to   
   carry on: Britain was facing a massive explosion in HIV   
   and ministers and civil servants simply refused to discuss   
   the cause of it. 'Ministers just won't listen because they   
   think it is racist' he said, 'but the public deserve at least   
   honesty.'   
   Even when the truth became intellectually commonly   
   accepted, media outlets such as the Guardian and BBC   
   carried on reporting dishonest accounts, presumably   
   because they had such deeply held emotional beliefs in the   
   issue that they couldn't bring themselves to write honestly   
   about it. A cover story I wrote for the Spectator was   
   directly attacked by a news story in my old paper the   
   Observer, whose desire to disprove what I had written   
   trumped their inability to do so.   
      
   Two years after my front page story in The Times, the   
   denial about the whole issue of HIV finally crumbled. The   
   Public Health Laboratory Service now openly reports that   
   African immigration is the main cause of new HIV in   
   Britain, and even left-wing media are enabled to report it.   
   One person told me that, even if it is true that the HIV   
   epidemic is driven by African immigration, it shouldn't be   
   written about because it will just fuel racism. But the   
   result of that conspiracy of silence is that the government   
   follows a policy that does absolutely nothing to combat   
   the growth of HIV in the UK. Tackling the epidemic will   
   fuel racism far less than allowing African immigration to   
   spark an HIV explosion, a development allowed by   
   government policy which is a political gift to the racist   
   British National Party.'   
      
   C/o ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)