I've always suspected that the whole AIDS crisis was greatly overstated for various reasons so I wouldn't be surprised if there were exaggerations going on today to force the spotlight on the issue.

Back when AIDS began to hit the population in the US it was pretty much confined to gay men and IV drug users and just a few unfortunate people that got nailed by blood transfusions and the like. By the time doctors really had this identified as a primarily blood-borne illness there was this hysteria built among the sexually active heterosexual community that made it sound as if any further unprotected sex was a guaranteed death warrant. The truth was that it was a very difficult disease to spread if you engaged in "normal" sexual activities.

I always got a kick out of when the topic would come up in social situations and the single people would start talking about how dangerous it was out there now and I'd do a little test. I'd ask the entire room how many of them personally knew someone that didn't fall into one of the high risk categories that had contracted the illness and invariably nobody ever did. Not one.

During that time, I asked hundreds of people the same question and the only ones that anyone knew that had gotten AIDS/HIV were gay men and drug users. Now obviously there were exceptions but I found it striking that the public hype out there simply didn't match the real world.

I wouldn't be surprised if that same hype is going on in the worldwide crusade today.

Art