Allow me to remind you of the facts, on the assumption they’ve been buried under the avalanche of politicised verbal rubble.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a disease that, if left untreated, will leave the sufferer with an average life expectancy of about 10 years.
AIDS can be successfully controlled with anti-retroviral drugs that are as effective as they are dear. But the value of a human life can’t be weighed against a few quid, or rather up to 25,000 of them, which is, give or take a few thousand, the annual cost of such therapy.
So far we’ve stayed within the realm of medical or, if you will, medico-economic facts. With any other disease, this is where we’d remain.
But AIDS isn’t just any old disease, and HIV isn’t just any old virus. For this organism attacks not only the immune system but also every precept of our multi-culti PC culture of share, care, be aware.
It has been known since AIDS first became fashionable that the disease has a pronounced anti-homosexual bias, nowadays known as homophobia. Without going into unsavoury graphic detail, HIV is typically (at first, almost solely) transmitted through amorous practices seldom favoured by straight men and, due to certain anatomical limitations, never by women.
This means that, while all progressive mankind celebrates homosexuality as a perfectly valid ‘lifestyle’, equal to the hetero kind socially and superior to it aesthetically, one biological organism insists on indulging in what my Texas friends used to call fag bashin’.
When this medicalised homophobia was first established, progressive mankind’s initial reaction was to deny that HIV had any homosexual bias. Much evidence was suppressed – until there was too much of it to suppress without losing all credibility.
Progressive mankind had to regroup then and give the matter some serious thought. Fine, they said, AIDS kills homosexuals. Now who else does so, or rather would love to, given the slightest chance?
Correct. All those homophobic, sexist, racist, misogynistic reactionaries who collectively add up to what Tony Blair so aptly called ‘the forces of conservatism’, from which he had proudly ‘liberated… the extraordinary talent of the British people… to create a model 21st-century nation’.
This observation could then be easily parlayed into a course of action. A fight against AIDS was no longer a medical challenge. It became a form of political struggle.
Though only deeply deranged fanatics go so far as to blame the ‘conservative establishment’ for having synthesised the virus deliberately, many make such allegations syllogistically.
The Hegelian syllogism works like a charm. Thesis: HIV hates homosexuals. Antithesis: so does the conservative establishment. Synthesis: ergo, it’s all the conservatives’ fault.
Flaming passion serves to plug the obvious logical gap, and passion, real or trumped up, is what progressive mankind has aplenty. It has also gradually acquired that powerful tool of all tyrants: control of language.
Hence they are able to insist that, while people dying of, say, cancer or multiple sclerosis are to be pitied, those dying of AIDS are to be sanctified. Their names must be entered into the martyrology of other victims of the conservative establishment: racial minorities, women, Muslims et al.
At a time when doctors routinely refuse to treat smokers because their diseases are caused by behavioural bloody-mindedness, no one is allowed as much as to suggest that a behavioural change is the most reliable way of keeping HIV at bay.
At the same time billions in whatever currency you care to name have been channelled out of research into, say, cancer and multiple sclerosis and into AIDS. This had an overall negative effect on mortality, but it wasn’t just about saving lives – it was about saving victims of conservatism.
No politician can now say anything along the lines of what I’ve said so far and hope to keep his career. Suggesting that most cases of AIDS are the sufferers’ own fault is a combination of sacrilege and suicide note.
It’s in this context that one can understand Douglas Carswell’s comments on Nigel Farage’s attack on health tourism. Those HIV carriers, said Mr Farage, come to Britain specifically to sponge off the NHS to the tune of £25K a year, give or take.
Mr Carswell, Ukip’s only MP, agreed that health tourism is a bad thing, but took exception to Mr Farage’s illustration. Using HIV for that purpose was, according to the parliamentary mouthpiece of true conservatism, ‘ill-advised’.
Why, pray tell? HIV is a better example than, say, cancer or multiple sclerosis, because not only is it comparably expensive to treat, but it’s also contagious. Predictably so, because many HIV carriers, especially those from places where AIDS is most prevalent, are less than prudent in keeping their condition to themselves.
This is a serious problem, and a deadly aspect of our overall immigration disaster. After all, many of our new arrivals come from sub-Saharan Africa, where 25 million people carry HIV. Africa in general, while having only about 15 per cent of the world’s population, accounts for 69 per cent of the world’s AIDS deaths.
The way to help those people is for HMG not to invite them here but to give pharmaceutical companies incentives to send anti-retroviral drugs to Africa at greatly reduced prices. What’s ill-advised is giving them access to Britain’s population in general and the NHS in particular.
Mr Carswell knows this as well as I or even Mr Farage. What he objected to wasn’t the substance of the argument, but the blasphemous disregard for the creed of share, care, be aware.
This means that the PC tyrants have won: they’ve imposed the terms of debate and can punish anyone for lack of compliance. If even our supposedly conservative politicians offer abject, supine surrender, what hope do we have? Don’t answer that.