What would you say if a powerful cyclists’ pressure group ganged up on the NHS and lobbied it to provide free cycle helmets to anyone who asked for one, accusing it of having on its hands the blood of every helmet-less cyclist who died while the NHS tried to spurn the demand? I think I can guess the answer in the case of most readers: shove off and buy your own helmets.
Why, then, does it become such a different matter when the National Aids Trust demands that the NHS provide a free supply of a drug known as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP, to people who want to have unprotected sex with multiple partners. The proposal has raised hardly any protest other than a dry response from the NHS itself that it wasn’t sure whether it had the authority to prescribe a drug which is purely preventative – or whether that should come under local authorities.
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