PAVLOS Georgiou is waiting to be sentenced tomorrow after being found guilty of knowingly infecting Janette Pink with the Aids virus. Mrs Pink already knows her sentence, although she cannot predict when the death penalty, incurred because she was guilty of having unprotected sex with her Greek Cypriot boyfriend, will be executed.

The unkind moralist may say that she is getting her just deserts; that in the mid-1990s, which is when Mrs Pink had her fling with the Greek Cypriot fisherman, not to insist on safer sex was to court disaster. Sexual chemistry, however, is no respecter of age, gender, class, race or place: the proof being that the world now has more than 12 million Aids patients, of whom 80% are heterosexual. Most of the 12 million cases have been contracted through sexual encounter, and Dr David Goldberg, deputy director of the Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health and an international Aids expert, has said: ''There is absolute cast-iron proof that only one exposure during unprotected sex can lead to the transmission of the disease.''

We have been the target of anti-Aids propaganda since the 1980s: a decade of messages ranging from the subtle to the sledge-hammer telling us to practice safe sex. Mrs Pink must have seen those messages, but then, haven't we all? And don't we choose to ignore them? Don't we reassure ourselves that this is a virus which can only be contracted by gays, or druggies, or businessmen who get pie-eyed in Bangkok or Nairobi and go mad with the natives? It is something which happens to prostitutes, to perverts, to the promiscuous, and we are none of these. Mrs Pink wasn't either, but Pavlos Georgiou's wife died of Aids in 1994, the year the pair started their two-year affair.

The law under which Mr Georgiou was tried and found guilty was introduced 50 years ago to try to stop the spread of venereal and other diseases. Fifty years ago, the very mention of the letters ''VD'' brought a blush to the cheeks of grown soldiers subjected to recruitment lectures on the subject. Today, the publicity about Aids means that condoms can be talked about over the teacups, bought in the supermarket, the service station, the wholefood shop, and from machines in ladies' lavatories, and they are available free from family planning services.

The theory is good: shame about the practice. Should Britain adopt a law similar to the one under which this Cypriot case was heard? Judge Antonis Liatsos said in court: ''A sick person has a legal obligation to avoid any action likely to transmit such a dangerous disease. No-one can be placed at risk due to an omission by another person.'' Graeme Lawrie, lecturer in law at Edinburgh University, says there were discussions in the 1980s about extending existing laws of assault in Scotland, and in England and Wales, in an attempt to cover the HIV situation. It was felt it was a dangerous road to go down.

If a woman were to bring a civil case claiming compensation for the shortening of her life because a man has infected her with the virus, it could be argued that this gives out the message that only the man is responsible. ''We should be saying that each of us is responsible,'' Mr Lawrie said. ''Unlike the common cold, the Aids virus is something we can control.'' This reasoning obviously does not apply if the woman is infected during a rape situation.

He added that in an era when so much is known about the virus, it could be considered better policy for the law to deny such actions and make consenting adults each take the consequences.

In criminal law, the mental state of the accused has to be determined: did he or she intend to murder their sexual partner by passing on the virus? Were they behaving recklessly? Unprotected sex could be considered reckless behaviour, but that, Mr Lawrie warned, is a short step from saying that high-risk groups such as the gay community would find it easier to be reckless.

''You would then be using the criminal law to mar-ginalise high-risk groups,'' Mr Lawrie said, ''and Aids is not about high-risk groups but high risk practices. It should be about individual responsibility.''

Mrs Pink has said since the verdict that all she wants to do now is get as well as possible, enjoy her family, ''and get on with my life''. She was too sick to go to Cyprus to hear the case she instigated, and her former boyfriend is also receiving medical care for his condition. That they both ignored the safe sex code is a reminder that the safe sex message is for all of us.