From PETER LINTHWAITE
Your views on the Seventh International AIDS Conference in Florence
(Comment, 29 June) are most appropriate.
May I reinforce your comments on the central importance of social and
behaviourial research in AIDS, and the fact that this area of research seems
in general to receive insufficient recognition for its actual and potential
contribution to prevention. For its part, the Economic and Social Research
Council has run a series of conferences this year in an attempt to bring
together behaviourial researchers and policy makers, and plans a further
conference next year which, it is hoped, will involve several researchers
from African countries.
The emphasis given at the conference to high-tech biomedical interventions
and to the commercial exhibitions as opposed to those of non-profit organisations
(of which we were one) reflects the relative priorities of the Western
countries. We would not doubt the importance of research into medical treatments;
but, at the same time, it is important that national and international conferences
give due weight to the social and behaviourial sciences, particularly in
the absence of effective medical intervention.
Peter Linthwaite Economic and Social Research Council Swindon
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