Michael Kirby

I first heard about AIDS in the early 1980s. It was sometimes called "GRID" and attributed exclusively to gay men. This made me sit up and listen. When it was blamed on the use of "poppers" (amylnitrate) I relaxed. Never liked those things.

Since then, we have all got wiser about AIDS and the HIV virus that causes it. But the early years were devastating. I lost twelve close friends in Australia and overseas. It was a terrible time.

I spoke at an early conference on AIDS in Australia. I examined the legal developments that were happening in other countries. This took me into topics such as sexual orientation, anal sex, sex-workers, injecting drug users and other touchy issues. A judicial colleague urged me to desist from involvement with AIDS. He said it was not "quite proper" for a judge. But then I thought of my friends and of the dangers to the whole human family. I did not desist.

Instead, I became involved in the work of Jonathan Mann in the Global Programme on AIDS. He invited me to join the World Health Organisation's Global Commission on AIDS. In Australia and Geneva I chaired meetings on AIDS and human rights. Now I serve on the UNAIDS Global Panel on HIV and Human Rights.

In a curious way, HIV and AIDS proved empowering. In comparison to all the suffering of the world, my own tiny ego began to seem so insignificant. In company with my partner of 30 years, Johan, I decided to drop the absurd pretence of "don't ask, don't tell." I had never completely hidden my sexuality. But the time had come to be open about it and to confront irrationality. In the end, science and knowledge will triumph over ignorance, fear and superstition.

We now know that most people infected with HIV are not homosexual or bisexual. They are members of the sexual majority. Yet there is no denying that the special burdens suffered by gay men in the early years of HIV mobilised many (as it did me) to confront ignorance and insist on truth so far as sexuality is concerned. We know that effective strategies against the spread of HIV and AIDS require a combination of legal protections against stigma and discrimination and assurances of ready access to the latest therapies.

Now UNAIDS faces new dilemmas. How can we step up access to the new therapies that can so improve the quality of life of those infected with HIV? Only by testing. Yet how can we do this without effective assurances of protection and benefits? Three million AIDS deaths a year is totally unacceptable. New strategies are needed. The approaches of earlier decades are overtaken by the new opportunities of today. The challenges of HIV and AIDS are never ending.

For me, and my partner, this is not a matter of statistics. It is a matter of precious friends lost to us. The lives lost and all the suffering propel moral people to redouble their efforts to prevent further HIV infections and to protect and help those already infected.

One day all this suffering will be a footnote to the human story. But with the suffering comes a great world movement for rationality in matters of sex and drugs. Only in this way will good come out of AIDS - when the human kindness that is born of so much death and pain takes hold of the human heart and leads us to a more just and rational world.