Treating the terror: lawmakers and AIDS.

• Author: Hooker, Tracey

True or false?

* Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a gay

white man's disease.

* AIDS is no longer an epidemic.

* AIDS is just a big-city problem.

* If you share a hypodermic needle, you risk getting AIDS.

Of the four statements, only the last is true.

Has the epidemic ended? More than half a million people in the United States have been diagnosed with AIDS and at least 300,000 have died. Nearly I million Americans are believed to be infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. At least 40,000 people are infected every year. Roughly speaking, for every American who dies from an HIV-related illness, another becomes infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Only white, homosexual males? In the United States, the HIV epidemic is shifting to women, blacks and Hispanics, people who live in small towns, the South and the Midwest, according to the CDC. Among older, white, gay and bisexual men, the rate of HIV infections has declined in some areas and stabilized nationally.

Now the epidemic is taking its greatest toll on young adults. New cases of AIDS are increasing most rapidly among...