Forty years since Terrence Higgins became the UK’s first named person to die of an AIDS-related illness on the 4 July 1982, new data shows that the public's attitudes to the virus remain stuck in the past.
The data also highlighted that a Government AIDS awareness advert from 1987 was particularly harmful, with almost half of those surveyed remembering it four decades after it aired. The data has been released by Terrence Higgins Trust, the charity established in Terry’s name to save lives during the darkest days of the epidemic.
With the haunting words "It's a deadly disease with no known cure" paired with a tombstone, the advert struck fear into a entire generation of LGBT+ people all over the UK.
