AIDS THREAT SHOULDN'T BE UNDERESTIMATED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 9, 1993                   TAG: 9302090364
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
AIDS THREAT SHOULDN'T BE UNDERESTIMATED
FEB. 5 became a sad day when I noted the Roanoke Times & World-News headline, "AIDS impact could fade, report claims," staring out at me. Like all ill-conceived if not grossly fallacious reasoning, it made it all too easy for the reader to be misled and to translate "could" into "would" into "will."
How could any group, let alone the National Research Council, underestimate the lethal potential of AIDS? Already two-thirds of all AIDS patients - more than 240,00 persons - are dead; at least a million Americans, HIV positive, are waiting in the wings; nurseries in our major cities are clogged with HIV babies. Sure, most cases are currently on the other-side-of-the-tracks. But who is so naive to believe that the sexual winds of society don't blow in every direction?
Unless the "safe-sex movement" (which includes all major options - i.e., abstinence, monogamy and careful use of condoms) is taken seriously by the vast majority of people around the world, all will live in greater jeopardy.
The council seems to have forgotten that we are issued one sexual passport at birth. Every sexual entry and exit stamped in it is indelible, and henceforth shared with every future sexual rite-of-passage. Let's be sure we know where we're going and not assume everything will be hunky-dory. ROBERT F. ROTH, M.D. Lewis-Gale Clinic SALEM

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB