With reference to your recent articles in conjunction with World Aids Day, it is commonly acknowledged that man is the most dominant species on earth and yet that is not so easily and readily recognised.

Nobel laureate Dr Joshua Lederberg has said that "the single biggest threat to man's dominance of this planet is the virus" an unseen enemy a billionth of his size. And if that were not sufficient irony, the virus that shows greater promise to wipe man off the face of this planet is not Ebola or even SARS but the HIV, which has triumphed so far against man by being able to turn the very weapon his sexuality - that has ensured his survival and proliferation for so long against him.

So the crux of issue on HIV/Aids is: which of the two attitudes or approaches ought we to take in relation to our sexuality?

One is our traditional, conservative and reserved approach. We don't talk about it in public, much less teach it openly in schools. According to this attitude, sex is for procreation reserved for married people. Sex for recreation especially between unmarried couples is promiscuous and sin. Those who do in outside the marital sanction should be punished. Sex with another person of same sex is an even greater sin against the natural order of nature.

The conservative approach believes the solution lies in strengthening one's values and virtues through comprehensive religious and moral education as a firewall against immoral activities for which the penalty is appropriately death by Aids.

The other approach takes a more contemporary modern (read Western), open-minded, liberal and realistic approach. One talks about the problem openly in the hope of bringing about a better understanding of our own sexuality in the context of grappling with the larger problem of HIV/Aids.

Greater publicity on the HIV/Aids situation is advocated, with sex education disseminated in schools. For this approach to be grasped, it is essential that our sexuality be accepted as natural.

Being natural, it implies that its expression cannot be confined to missionary positions between married heterosexual couples only. Public displays of affection should not be scorned.

It is part of that seamless web of amalgam of values that does not view sex between unmarried couples or adolescents as "sin" but as a practical problem to be managed. Nor is prostitution a heinous vice but a social problem to be legalised and regulated if it cannot be eradicated by raids. Nor should homosexuality be condemned to the social margins, but given social and legal rights.

Whereas the first approach is judgmental based on moral and religious considerations, the second is tolerant, empirical and practical, offering no moral judgment, but all the time showing the way, giving support the entire time, task orientated, and seeking practical solutions to the growing problem.

Which of the two approaches should we support? A compromise is hard. For the twains are diametrically opposed worldviews. Malaysian Aids Council president Marina Mahathir has remarked: "I once heard a deputy minister say that Aids is a blessing because it kills off drug users".

Extrapolating this view, it suggests that our Maker has intended the virus as a means to weed out the morally weak amongst us who do not respond to religious and moral teachings. This includes drug users, prostitutes, and promiscuous characters.

The problem with this "natural weeding out" interpretation is that it decimates not only the so-called sexually profligate individual, but also his/her innocent spouse faithfully carrying out conjugal sexual obligation, or their child affected during pregnancy.

Lest it be forgotten, the more moral, judgmental and conservative we get, the worse it will be. The moral high ground has not yielded desired results, judging by statistics of rising HIV infection and social problems.

There may well be a nexus between the repression of natural sexual instincts and rebellion against such repression, by doing it more rampantly in private where there is no discrimination.

Where the first approach has hitherto not yielded desired results, we have no choice but to try the second approach of taking a more liberal and open attitude towards our sexuality.

To the growing legions of self-appointed public guardians of morality, being ashamed of our sexuality is to abjure life itself in more than one sense.