That's what a hospital consultant asked a colleague of mine (in for a minor operation) last week. And if a highly educated health specialist in a major London hospital's got such a false picture of HIV - still incurable, by the way - what hope do we have with the general public?

Legal in the US for some time now, the self-test kit has been a focus of some controversy in the UK, and has been illegal for many years. You are, though, allowed to sample your own blood at home, and then send it off to an accredited laboratory (privately, of course).

Have you ever been at risk of HIV? Most people think they haven't, and quite a few of you are wrong. In fact, around 25,000 of you in the UK are so wrong that you're walking around with HIV without knowing it. If you're one of those 25,000 (and let's face it, that's much better odds than winning the Lottery, which many of us hope to do) then you are risking your own health and life, and you may well be unwittingly putting others at risk too.

AIDS is a difficult subject to broach, as campaigner and HIV patient Robert Fieldhouse knows only too well. For many people it is a disease that still...