AIDS is still a serious struggle
College students in the 1980s heard the warning: beware of AIDS. The disease would affect one in 10 people in our lifetime, we were told. It would be far more serious than any sexually transmitted disease, as it would clearly kill. Rank it with cancer or heart disease. Roll the dice with unprotected sex or the sharing of needles, and you will die.
Gone were the inappropriate jokes of the fallen Rock Hudson from just a few years earlier. Movies like “Philadelphia” and “And the Band Played On” brought AIDS awareness out of colleges and into the mainstream. When Magic Johnson announced that he was HIV positive in 1991, the disease quickly became even more real. With the basketball legend and others seemingly winning the fight nearly two decades later, Americans have become dangerously more lax in their attitudes toward HIV/AIDS, forgetting that the disease can affect anyone, including 1,795 Iowans right now.
AIDS has not transgressed as projected a few decades ago, but that doesn’t lessen the seriousness of the disease for all who are affected by it and for those who potentially could be. In this week’s cover story, reporter Matt Miller interviews a fellow Iowan who is fighting the difficult and once-secret struggle in being HIV positive and now serves as an advocate to all who directly and indirectly battle this disease. We salute her courage and are honored to tell her story.
Thanks for reading. CV
