The papers announced a few days ago that Americans are <a 
href="http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971205/aids_americans_1stld_1.html"> 
unusually well-informed about  AIDS</a>. Did they really think they had 
failed for the past 15 years?

No disease in history has been granted the number of articles and special 
reports, the movie star advocates and rock concert benefits, the 
Hollywood movies and mainstreet marches, the foundations and 
associations, textbook chapters and college courses, laws and legal 
specialists, Presidential panels, Pentagon research and international 
conferences, Wall Street shutdowns, museum exhibits, billboards, 
commercials, and square feet of fabric as AIDS.

<i>Of course</i> Americans are knowledgeable about HIV and AIDS. Over the 
past decade we've been taught about lymphocytes and antibodies, about 
viruses and retroviruses, viral loads, protease inhibitors, vertical 
transmission, PCP, TB and how to prophylax against them. We've been 
taught about cell receptors, and most probably have at least heard of 
both CD4s and CD8s. We've learned who (usually) gets it and how they 
(probably) got it, where to get tested and where to get counseled if the 
news is bad, how long it is "dormant," how Haiti and Africa and now India 
and Thailand and everywhere is being devastated by this disease. We've 
seen images on the screen and on the front pages of Science sections of 
things labeled "HIV" invading cells labeled "lymphocyte," then we 
followed the arrow to the dead lymphocyte that results.

And we know it could happen in our own blood if we aren't careful.

We have not only been taught about HIV and AIDS, we have been taught 
fear. We have learned that there is a scientific reason that we should be 
even a little bit anxious around homosexuals, or around homeless people. 


In this time of triumphant individualism, when everything that can be 
turned into a competitive encounter is, when we are inundated by 
suggestions that our security is endangered by those around us (so carry 
this gun, or buy this alarm, or hire this guard, or vote for this crime 
legislation, or support building more prisons, or don't let that welfare 
queen take your tax dollars, etc.), HIV is yet another reason to be 
suspicious of those we encounter. It invades our personal space, so that 
we are made to fear even those who would least provoke it otherwise.

In the age of AIDS, <i>everyone</i> is a suspect.

HIV, far beyond its supposed existence as a tiny piece of (mostly 
defective) RNA, is a myth. It is an image that sits in our collective 
psyche. It fills the space between individuals totally, completely, or at 
least that is the goal. The media's self-congratulatory reports as of 
late suggest they are not doing a bad job of it.

AIDS Authority believes that there is far more going on in the bodies of 
those who are sick and dying due to immune suppression than infection 
with HIV. The HIV myth serves many useful purposes, but one of them is 
<i>not</i> to prevent or cure any disease.

Americans are informed about AIDS. AIDS Authority hopes to educate them.