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The Guardian - UK

Politics

Letters

SHOCKING: My herpes advice for mary whitehouse - What They Never Told You

Mary Whitehouse

Mary Whitehouse — Mary Whitehouse wrote to the secretary of state for health and social security about herpes genitalis. Photograph: Times Newspapers/Shutterstock

I think I can go one better than David Conroy (Letters, 1 April) in surviving the Mary Whitehouse experience. In the 1970s, I was part of the small team in the Department of Health and Social Security responsible for policy on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Part of my job was to reply to letters. They could be very wide-ranging, and we devised a stock reply, basically telling the correspondent where they could find information on STDs and, if need be, treatment.

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