‘The Government has lied, and I am glad’ proclaimed journalist Mark Lawson in a retrospective commentary on the notorious 1987 ‘tombstones and icebergs’ campaign which raised the spectre of an imminent epidemic of heterosexually-acquired HIV infection to scare the public into sexual restraint. ‘Not since the heyday of the Catholic convent school had children been so bluntly instructed in the causal link between sex and terror’ he continued, approvingly.1 Lawson freely conceded that the central theme of the AIDS awareness campaign — that HIV was a significant threat to heterosexuals in Britain — was simply untrue. But why let the facts stand in the way of a moral crusade?
The claim that it is legitimate for politicians and health authorities to lie in the cause of improving the moral conduct …