In his Pajamas Media column Dalrymple takes the Lancet to task for its constant sanctimonious moralizing, this time “a typically sickly and nauseatingly unctuous statement of ethical principles” in its majestic-sounding “Declaration of Melbourne”:

We, the signatories and endorsers of this Declaration, affirm that non-discrimination is fundamental to an evidence-based, rights-based and gender transformative response to HIV and effective public health programmes.

One could go mad trying to put this into plain English. It probably means that all patients with HIV, regardless of how they contracted it, should be treated as well as possible. Incidentally, this must be a matter of kindness and decency, or perhaps of expedience, not of rights, for otherwise the right would have been granted for everyone to behave as he wished and for others to pay for the consequences.