The scientists need to get back to work

  This week.....  the news was full of reports about a possible scientific breakthrough
in the battle against HIV/AIDS.  Words like "gamechanger" were thrown around as
the scientific community gave one another countless high fives.  Did the scientific
community finally find a cure at long last?  No.  The hub bub concerns the possibility
of a level of containment involving already infected people and their partners.
Here's the 411.  Supposedly, people infected with HIV can lower the risk of passing
the disease  to their significant others by taking retroviral medications earlier rather
than later.  One question though.  What about the rest of the population?  
What about the men and women who are not monogamous?   What about the
singletons that engage in high risk sexual behavior?  What the scientific community
is all agog about is the possibility of partial containment.  Key word here,
P-A-R-T-I-A-L.  So in essence, the scientific community has provided possible
piece of mind to monogamous couples with infected partners and they've forsaken
the rest of the population that is still at risk.  There's another matter that the scientific
community forget to take into account while they were all  backslapping one another
this past week.  The fact remains that HIV is still  a potential time bomb inside the
bodies of those who are infected with it.  If the retroviral meds have had very little
benefit over the 27 years since HIV/AIDS has been on the scene, what makes
the scientific community think that they'll suddenly start paying dividends
to HIV positive men and women in the year 2011 and beyond.

  The real breakthrough is a fully realized level of both prevention and cure.
The real breakthrough is the day when people don't have to watch their lovers or
their friends or their immediate family members get eaten alive when someone enters
the stage of full blown AIDS.  The news of this past week is actually more harmful
than good.  It has the potential to make people feel less afraid of a disease that
isn't going away anytime soon.  As long as HIV/AIDS is still around, apathy is
the most dangerous opponent of all.