Russ Feingold: “it was 25 years ago this week that a little-noticed report from the Centers for Disease Control documented a peculiar…”

“it was 25 years ago this week that a little-noticed report from the Centers for Disease Control documented a peculiar cluster of deadly pneumonia cases in Los Angeles. That report was the first official mention of AIDS, although the disease had no name at the time. Since 1981, AIDS has become an international human catastrophe, killing more than 25 million people, orphaning more than 15 million children, and infecting more than 65 million people. Today, there are 40 million people living with HIV. This issue affects us on both a global and a domestic scale. There are over 1.2 million people in the United States living with HIV/AIDS, and there are over 40,000 new infections each year. While the United States made great strides to contain the disease and reduce the number of deaths throughout the 1990s, it now appears that this trend is reversing. The death rate is beginning to destabilize, and the infection rate is growing at a staggering rate among certain populations, particularly people of color. African Americans have the highest AIDS case rates of any racial or ethnic group--more than nine times the rate for Whites. There is still much to be done in the United States to combat HIV/ AIDS, but the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the rest of the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is truly devastating.…”