Talking Points:
Protecting Our Kids from AIDS

• Every hour, two young Americans become newly infected with HIV.

• While America's investment in AIDS care and research is paying off through lower death rates, our divestment from HIV prevention is creating a new epidemic for a new generation of Americans.

• For many young people who were too young to witness the devastation AIDS wrought in the first 15 years of the epidemic, condoms and safe sex are simply a "retro-eighties thing" book-ended between C. Everett Koop and Nancy Reagan's wagging finger.

• "Just say no" just doesn't work -- young people need to know what they can do, not only what they can't.

• We must provide young people at risk with the unvarnished truth about HIV as well as the sober facts about the new AIDS treatments. AIDS drugs cost $40 a day -- condoms cost a dollar.

• Investing in prevention not only saves lives, it saves money. The 40,000 new HIV infections each year add $6.2 billion in lifetime treatment costs to the nation's health care bill.

• We have to stop this new epidemic so that AIDS doesn't ravage a new generation of Americans the way it did the last generation.

Just the Facts

Half of the 40,000 new HIV infections in America each year are among young people.

Every hour, two young Americans become newly infected with HIV.

HIV infection rates are growing faster among adolescent women than any other group.

Before they reach the age of 18, more than half of females and three-fourths of males have had sexual intercourse.

Nearly 90% of young people don't even think they are at risk for HIV despite the fact that they comprise half of all new infections.