America Living With AIDS

who didn't quit smoking. We try to
love them and care for them and comfort them." We must replace the innocent/guilty mindset with sympathy
and care for people with HIV disease.
Our nation's leaders have not done
well. In the past decade, the White
House has rarely broken its silence on
the topic of AIDS. Congress has
shown leadership in developing critical legislation, but has often failed to
provide adequate funding for AIDS
programs. Articulate leadership guiding Americans toward a proper
response to AIDS has been notably
absent. We are accustomed to hearing
from the "bully pulpit" about national
problems and how we should address
them, so perhaps the public cannot be
blamed for assuming that such a
silence means that nothing important
is happening. Their false calm is reinforced by politicians who declare that
enough has been done about AIDS,
since it is "just one disease," and that
we should redirect our attention to
other diseases that currently kill more
people.
But we cannot turn away from
what is coming, lest we be blind-sided.
There are at least one million Americans silently infected with HIV. Most
of them will get sick during the next
decade. And in the absence of a
national effort, the virus continues to
spread. The cumulative deaths of the
first ten years of AIDS will more than
double in the next two: by the end of
1993, the toll will rise from 120,000 to
over 350,000. AIDS is already the
leading cause of death for young men
and women in many parts of the

country and is climbing relentlessly up
the list of causes of "years of potential
life lost."
What makes these numbers particularly tragic is that there is so much
that we can do to turn the tide of HIV
through prevention of further spread,
and so much that we must do to provide more humane and compassionate
care to those who have already been
caught in the path of the virus. But
there are two destructive attitudes
within our borders that hamper these
actions. They are a thinly veiled feeling that those who acquire the virus
are getting what they deserve and a
collective indifference to their fate. As
long as these attitudes persist there
will be reluctance to engage in the
effort required to surmount HIV disease. Overcoming these attitudes will
require leadership-leadership from
the highest levels of government and
the private sector.
To accomplish the tasks that loom
ahead, we must, as a society, find a
way to convert anger, fear, and indifference into informed action. We
must deal effectively with discrimination and prejudice, overcome present
governmental inertia, rededicate ourselves to maintaining a necessary
intensity of research endeavor, educate
the public to replace panic with an
informed awareness of what is needed
to prevent infection, and coordinate
our resources to meet the urgent
health care needs of the sick in costefficient ways that take full advantage
of our powerful science. We must rec
the cumulative
deaths of the first
ten years of AIDS
will more than
double in the next
two: by the end of
1993, the toll will
rise from 120,000
to over 350,000.