World AIDS Day
In the age of protease inhibitors, antiretroviral therapy, and "morning
after" pills, it's easy to kid ourselves into thinking that AIDS is a
thing of the past. Rules about safer sex that we had internalized and
believed to be carved in stone are suddenly being relaxed or even thrown
out the window. Alarmingly, at least half of new cases of HIV in the
United States occur among people under 25.
Overseas, of course, the news is much worse. Eighty percent of those who
will die of AIDS this year live in Africa, where in some countries
infection rates exceed 25 percent of the population. A new report from the United Nations
indicates that new cases of HIV in Russia will more than double this
year. The same report points out that there are more than one-and-a-half times as many cases
of HIV infection today (36 million) than medical
experts predicted a decade ago, despite progress in treatment and
prevention.
World AIDS Day, December 1, is a time to celebrate the progress we have made toward
eradicating HIV, preventing its spread, and enabling millions of people
infected with it to live full lives. But it is also a time to remember
how far we still have to go in changing attitudes, changing behaviors,
and changing the perception that we've won the war.
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