When Sex Could Kill

With 38 million people living with HIV, Woman investigates whether the stigma attached to the disease in the 80s and 90s still exists today

- Frances Leate

If you’re one of the millions of people who tuned into Channel 4 series It’s A Sin recently, then you will know why the show has proved so popular.

Described by Graham Norton as ‘the best five hours of television’ he’s seen in years, the show follows the lives of a group of young people who move into a London flat together in 1981. It depicts the excitement and fun of the 1980s and the raw and chilling reality of how the AIDS crisis destroyed so many lives. Almost 40 years later, while the nation is forced to stay home because of a deadly pandemic sweeping the globe, the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s has again become headline news thanks to the TV series. It has also been credited with prompting more people than ever to get tested for the virus, as well as helping to lift the taboo of being HIV-positive.

Thanks to medical advances, HIV is no longer a life-limiting illness and it is hoped that all new cases of the disease will be eradicated by 2030. But when it comes to people’s attitudes towards the disease, how much has really changed? Woman investigates.

‘IT FELT LIKE A HUGE, SHAMEFUL SECRET’

Jane Shepherd, 61, is a graphic designer and lives in Portsmouth.

I still remember looking around at the walls and chairs in the waiting room of the newly opened HIV centre in London in April 1990 and crying uncontrollably. I’d just been told I was HIVpositive and because there was no treatment or cure for my illness, I could expect to live for just five to eight years.