Soldiers in the Fight

"... There are more than 91,000 names on the AIDS Memorial Quilt. ... There are so many names that it would take someone 33 days to see the whole quilt, one minute per panel. ...

"As horrific as the figures are, they don't represent how science overcame its earliest competitive impulses to work together in trying to understand and treat the disease. They don't explain how the deadly swath cut by AIDS forced many people to confront their biases and to change their hearts and minds about some of their fellow men and women.

"They don't demonstrate how nations have committed money and resources to fight AIDS within their own borders, as well as beyond. They don't convey how far medicine has come in lengthening the lifespans of people with AIDS, even as a vaccine and a cure still remain beyond our reach.

"They don't demonstrate how many people are not paying attention to the lessons of AIDS -- practicing safe sex, promoting condom use and supporting needle-exchange programs, among them -- and, despite the education of the past 30 years, are joining the ranks of the infected at rates that are simply unacceptable; the Los Angeles Times reports that most new infections occur in people younger than 30 and that transmission rates among gay men, the first casualties of AIDS, 'have rebounded in recent years.'

"AIDS does not belong to the past. It is here today, and it will be here tomorrow. More names will be added to the quilt before science catches up with the disease and stops it from killing so many more.

"As Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, wrote in last Sunday's Forum, 'Enormous challenges remain and must be met by the next generation of scientists, public health officials, and politicians throughout the world. History will judge us as a global society by how well we address the challenges in the next few decades of HIV/AIDS.'

"All of us remain soldiers in that fight."

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