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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Start the Week

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday

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Tom Sutcliffe

Peter Staley

Anne Johnson

Peter Horby

Louise Welsh

Katy Hickman

Start the Week: AIDS Activism and Surviving a Plague

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28/11/2016

AIDS Activism and Surviving a Plague

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, AIDS Activism and Surviving a Plague

Tom Sutcliffe with Peter Staley, Anne Johnson, Peter Horby and Louise Welsh.

Cultural discussion show. Tom Sutcliffe discusses health epidemics with activist Peter Staley, scientists Anne Johnson and Peter Horby and author Louise Welsh.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe looks at what happens during a health epidemic and its aftermath. 

The US activist Peter Staley was instrumental in forcing scientists and pharmaceutical companies to develop life-saving HIV/AIDs drugs. Thirty years later and with drugs now readily available, the concern is that the rate of new cases of HIV remains constant. 

Professor Anne Johnson was involved in the biggest-ever-official investigation of Britain's sexual habits, which was vetoed at the time by Margaret Thatcher. She says continuing to understand people's attitudes and behaviour is vital to the nation's health. 

More than eleven thousand people died during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. When the crisis hit its peak in 2014 there were no effective drugs and Professor Peter Horby was one of a team of scientists who conducted a drugs trial in the midst of the epidemic. He explains how what they discovered can be used for future health scares. 

The author Louise Welsh is completing a trilogy of novels in which a killer disease has devastated the world. She explains why plague literature has proved so popular and enduring.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Photo: ACT UP activists at the International AIDS Conference in San Francisco, 1990 Credit: Rick Gerharter.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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