About 15 years ago, when the AIDS menace became apparent, a consensual lie was adopted by governments in Ireland and Britain: that we were all equally in danger, and that the disease was going to sweep through society, slaying thousands. It was rubbish, utter rubbish, but it was politically correct rubbish, so that was all right, says Kevin Myers
For we weren't all equally at risk. Those who indulged in unprotected heterosexual intercourse even with many partners were far less exposed to risk than male sodomites. This central truth was ignored because it was seen to be unfairly "discriminating" against homosexuals, though of course, AIDS itself had no such scruples.
We told cowardly lies about AIDS, and we're telling cowardly lies yet again with the headlines across newspapers earlier this week that there had been a dramatic increase in HIV infection among "heterosexuals". This seemed to bear out the alarming warnings of all those years ago, except it didn't. What those newspaper reports were doing was providing another version of the old politically correct lie.
Nearly 80 per cent of these "heterosexual" outbreaks of HIV - 186 of them - were in fact among immigrants from Africa. This single category is more than three times larger than the total number of new cases of HIV among either native homosexuals or drug users. Just one in three of the total of 69 Irish males infected with HIV are heterosexuals. All 46 sub-Saharan males are heterosexuals.
There were 23 Irish women with HIV, but 140 sub-Saharan women with the disease. And the African figure could indeed be far worse, for 27 cases of HIV-positive female cases were "undetermined" as to geographical origin. A comparable number of men - 28 - were also listed as geographically "undetermined". However, we know that of this "undetermined" group, 25 - nearly 50 per cent - contracted the disease through heterosexual intercourse. Moreover, nearly the same again also have an unrecorded cause of contamination.
So actuarially, we could probably put almost this entire group with no known place of origin into the category of sub-Saharan African. In other words, about 167 women of a total of 198 HIV-infected women in Ireland came from Africa, as did 74 of the 165 men. So, Irish heterosexual practices are - broadly speaking - not the main vector for spreading the disease in Ireland; and nor indeed are Irish homosexual activities either - only 42 per cent of all infected males are Irish.
So what we're seeing here is not so much a simple increase of HIV transmission, but rather a large scale importation of it, especially from Africa. Our African population is very small, yet it has already become the single dominant factor in HIV-AIDS in Ireland.
What are we to do about this? Lynch anyone who points it out for being a hysterical racist? That might make liberals feel very virtuous, but it won't make the problem go away. Indeed, the reverse is happening. The problem is growing. All eight of the HIV-positive babies identified in Ireland last year are of African origin, and more are certain to follow.
Why? Because of this. One quarter of all children born in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda are African. One fifth of the nearly 8,000 children born in the Coombe are "non-national", again, mostly African. In other words, our African population is growing rapidly, and so are our levels of heterosexually transmitted HIV infection. The two are intimately related.
So. Are we going to pretend this isn't so? Shall we call such findings racist, to be denounced on high by our liberal divinities? And will we continue to import a virulent strain of the AIDS virus in large quantities in order to placate the dogma of anti-racism? Or are we going to take sensible steps to protect not merely ourselves, our health system but also the Africans who have settled here? We would be barking mad not to. This means enforcing our immigration laws with rigour, and imposing compulsory medical checks on all non-EU citizens who seek to live here. This will also involve sending infected illegal immigrants back where they came from. Otherwise, we become Africa's AIDS out-patient clinic.
This is not just to protect ourselves, but those Africans who have lawfully settled here, and who no more want to see the disease spreading through their communities than do the rest of us. For AIDS is the enemy of us all, immigrants especially.
But will anything be done? It's doubtful. The prevailing orthodoxy in Irish life today is an unconnected liberalism, which believes that if you don't tackle social issues such as immigration, and instead pound upon your anti-racism tom-toms, all problems will go away. But Africa is the living - or rather, dying - proof that you cannot conquer HIV-AIDS by hopeful neglect alone.
Stern epidemiological measures are vital, yet there's little chance of those measures occurring without people being told the truth by the media, which certainly isn't happening at the moment. And the truth is that the prevalent AIDS among us now is not "heterosexual" but African.
One further figure should get the alarm-bells ringing: the eight children with HIV. All AIDS is a calamity, but among infants especially so, and the moral obligation to ensure that we don't have further generations of children - of all races - doomed to lingering, premature death is absolute.
Will we honour that obligation? Or will we retreat into the closet marked sanctimony, and there mumble pious non-racist juju, even as this terrible disease spreads through our society? The latter, probably. An Irish solution to an African problem.