Princess Diana’s very real role in fighting the stigma of Aids | Letters
I'd like to take issue with the statements about Aids in Hilary Mantel's otherwise wonderful Princess Diana essay (The princess myth, Review, 26 August). It is not right to say that in 1987 only the ignorant or bigoted thought that casual contact would infect them - or perhaps it's more true to say that the ignorant and bigoted made up the majority of the population.
In 1987 the US banned HIV-infected immigrants and travellers. 1987 was the year President Reagan first mentioned the disease in public, and the beginning of the UK's "Don't Die in Ignorance" campaign. It was also the year that the activist group Act Up was founded, meaning the very beginning of concerted public information. There wasn't just ignorance about transmission, but widespread uncertainty in the medical community itself. As the New York Times reported in February 1987 in an article entitled Facts, theory and myth on the spread of Aids, "Experts say there is no danger in a peck on the cheek of an infected person but they recommend against any exchange of saliva and deep kissing with an infected person." Stigma played a huge part in the ongoing nightmare of an Aids diagnosis, and whatever else one may think of Princess Diana, her gesture in touching a person with Aids did occur in a climate of widespread and unnecessary ignorance and prejudice that she did her best to dispel.
Olivia Laing
Cambridge