I would like to offer an unreserved apology for the offense I have caused with my words.

In response to your complaint I contacted the Terrence Higgins Trust to see if there were any statistics to shed light on what we know about the transgenerational transmission of HIV.

Unfortunately there are no records kept of the relative ages of transmitter/transmittee so the only hard statistic I could glean from the figures sent to me was: if you are over 40 your risk of being HIV+ve is slightly greater than if you are under 40.

The assumption I made in my article is that there is a likely direction of transmission from older to younger. There is no evidence that this does take place but there is also no evidence that it does not take place.

Now that I have been challenged I realise that I do not know what is happening for sure and also that the statement which has caused offense could easily be taken by others as reinforcing the prevalent misapprehension among the young that you can only catch HIV by having sex with older men which, of course, is rubbish!

My mission is to attempt  to wisely corrupt the gay youth of the world with love and sadly with my factually unfounded opinion I have not only caused offense to some of my  HIV+ve elder peers but I have also potentially misled my target readership.

I am truly sorry and I will endeavor to be far more careful in the future.

Yours with deepest respect