SOURCE: Maitland, Sara. “Practising Safe Language.” Spectator 262, no. 8385 (25 March 1989): 29.

In the following review, Maitland agrees with Sontag's assessment in AIDS and Its Metaphors that society views certain diseases as more than physical ailments, but also as social issues centering on the contraction of the disease.

Compared to heart attacks, cancer, even road deaths, few people have died of Aids. Yet we have rushed to attach meaning to the condition more than to any other. (We have proliferated so much meaning, indeed, that we have, by and large, lost any sense: ‘God's punishment on homosexuals’ suggests a very bizarre view of God's justice, given that one of the lowest possible risk groups is women homosexuals.) As usual when human communities struggle to create meaning, we have also created a language, a set of metaphors, to use about Aids, which are meant to be descriptive, explanatory, but in fact—as...