Speaking personally, it's not a monumental threat to me, as I'm not homosexual, never shot drugs intraveneously, and the likelihood of getting it from heterosexual sex is still fairly remote (I hope). I can remember when I first read about the disease in 1980 or 81 (I think it was in "Us" magazine), and it was described as a "gay cancer". I couldn't figure out how gay people could get the same cancer (I assumed it had to have something to do with the semen), but I figured I was immune. Then, not long afterward, several people I went to high school with shot heroin intraveneously and shared the needle together; it was not yet common knowledge that this was a surefire way of transmitting the virus. They all died of AIDS (one of them was the father of a young son), except for one guy who gave himself a "hot shot" on learning that he had the virus. The only time it really became a personal issue for me was during the mid-80's, when I went into the hospital for what I thought was going to be minor surgery and nearly bled to death. This was right after Rock Hudson had died, and when they told me they had had to give me a blood transfusion, I groaned, and said, "You've got to be kidding!" The doctor replied, "What were we supposed to do? We couldn't let you bleed to death on the operating table." Thankfully, hospitals had been testing blood supplies in an effort to detect the virus for about a year prior to my operation. Had I been operated on only a year earlier, there might have been real cause for concern. Nonetheless, I lived in great fear for a long time afterward, until the likelihood that I had contracted the disease faded with the passage of time (I remained anemic for about a year following the operation). Considering that AIDS is a disease so closely identified with homosexuality, and considering how intensely homophobic we are as a society, I suspect it will be a long, long time before any cure is found, if ever. Sad, but considering that we live in a society still debating "evolution" versus "creationism" in some of our public schools, not really surprising.