Critics stated that both The Sun and Lord Kilbracken cherry-picked the results from one specific study while ignoring other data reports on HIV infection and not just AIDS infection, which the critics viewed as unethical politicisation of a medical issue. Lord Kilbracken himself criticised The Sun's editorial and the headline of its news story; he stated that while he thought that gay people were more at risk of developing AIDS it was still wrong to imply that no one else could catch the disease. The Press Council condemned The Sun for committing what it called a "gross distortion". The Sun later ran an apology, which they ran on Page 28. Journalist David Randall argued in the textbook The Universal Journalist that The Sun's story was one of the worst cases of journalistic malpractice in recent history, putting its own readers in harm's way.

What did critics believe about The Sun and Lord Kilbracken's ideas on AIDS?