The fight against AIDS: Now or never

AIDS is a beautiful killer. There is something romantic about tens of millions of people around the world united in death even though they speak different languages. Like drowning victims whose screams are overwhelmed by the turbo engines on fancy cruise ships passing by, the afflicted are pulled below the sea's dark surface in fits of anonymity.

With 42 million citizens, the nation of HIV is one of the largest in the world-larger than Spain, Poland, South Africa, Australia. Imagine a total nation imploding upon itself in a quagmire of infectious rancordisappearing completely off the map. That is what we are witnessing. This is happening right now.

Within the next 20 years it is very likely that a handful of other such nations will meet their end. Little bulbs burning out across the globe, silent like streetlights listlessly shutting off as the ambient light of dawn grows more brilliant. Blindingly brilliant.

Avert your eyes. It is the easiest thing to doto shut yourself off from the chaos and pretend that it cannot get you. Build ivory towers surrounded by moats with ugly monsters and it cannot get you. Condemn those that fall prey and it cannot get you. Make it a disease of otherness and it cannot get you.

Drug users (criminals), blacks (criminals), homosexuals (criminals). They deserve it. In America, those with HIV made the wrong choices. They failed themselves.

The United States has actually been one of the most progressive nations in terms of funding for global AIDS programs, but when it comes to our own people, we shut the door. And padlock it. Jesse Helms has "repented" and now recognizes how important it is to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Africa. He apologized for his record on consistently preventing funding for fighting global AIDS, saying that in retrospect he should have done more and was ashamed. Those poor African babies. But as for Americans with AIDS, he says they deserve it because of their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

The U.S. will soon see its 1 millionth HIV infection. It has probably already occurred and we just don't know it. Young heterosexual females that live in the south comprise the population seeing the fastest growing HIV transmission rates. New Jersey is now the most dangerous state in the Union for a woman to contract HIV. There are over 125,000 children in the U.S. alone who have been orphaned to AIDS. Annual health care costs reach into the billions. The U.S., like the world, is facing a crisis. A public health crisis, an economic crisis, a political crisis, and at the root is HIV.

What can really be done to curb the spread of AIDS in the U.S.? The WHO, NIH, CDC, AMA, and the ABA all encourage increasing access to sterile syringes as one of the most effective methods for slowing the spread of blood borne pathogens such as HIV. Increased access includes over the counter sales, deregulation of possession and needle exchange programs.

Providing condoms and information about safe sex to teens is key also. Sexual health abstinence-only programs have repeatedly been shown to be ineffective. For comparison, no published, peer-reviewed report has ever shown that teaching kids about safe sex increases sexual activity, but that it does increase condom use.

What can really be done to curb the spread of AIDS internationally? Most countries with raging AIDS epidemics have other major structural problems as well. Some African countries spend as much as 20 percent of their export earnings annually on paying back foreign debt. The U.S. should drop the debt for countries that meet certain regulations and structural procedures in developing sound public health infrastructures.

Treatment must be made available as well. With many nations facing annual per capita incomes of $200 to $3,000, AIDS meds that cost over a dollar a day are out of the question. Certain pharmaceuticals have been at the forefront in lowering prescription costs, but many have not. Affordable meds must be available to all nations and populations before the AIDS epidemic can ever be tamed.

Every dollar the U.S. spends today to prevent the spread of AIDS will save thousands of dollars in the future. Excu.s.es such as "it costs too much" need to be stopped. If we don't have the money now, we definitely won't have it then. Various campus groups are working on standing up to AIDS and voicing concern for what will be the most deadly killer of this century. Individual efforts, group efforts, Congressional efforts, all are needed to slay this beast. Robin Williams is a Wilson School major from Greenboro, N.C. He can be reached at awilliam@princeton.edu.