ABSTRACT
It is now well established from studies of gay and bisexual men in the USA, Europe and Australia that in the mid to late 1980s there was a major move towards the adoption of ‘safer sex’ in this population (Hart, 1989). However, while these trends may have applied on a population basis, unsafe sex was and remains a significant problem. Indeed, there has been an increase in the incidence of rectal gonorrhoea (taken as a proxy marker of unsafe sexual behaviour) in gay men in London (Singaratnam et al., 1991), a rising incidence of HIV-1 infections in gay men (Evans et al., 1993) and a continuing high prevalence of infection in gay and bisexual men in England (Hart et al., 1993).
