Warm weather plus beers in coolers plus Slope Week plus daily 4/20s plus Jamison plus you … it all equals sex. Unless you're a prominent member of the Catholic Church or a recipient of HIV/AIDS money from George Bush, you're using a condom and getting tested regularly. Right?

Just two years ago, the U.S. hit a milestone: over one million Americans became HIV+. Globally - and this affects you - over 40 million people are infected, and about 4 million new infections occurred in 2005. More than three million people died of AIDS, meaning that incidence is increasing, not decreasing.

In discussions about the epidemic, we pretend AIDS is something distant from us, interesting for scientists and sociologists, but not something in our community. We think HIV is something that doesn't happen in our circles, in between our sheets. As a consequence, sometimes we don't use protection. We assume that our partners are safe. Seriously: How many times have you actually asked someone about their last test? Convincing yourself that you're not at risk is how you get infected and infect others.

Let's settle this right now: Planned Parenthood does confidential and anonymous HIV antibody tests. Payment is on a sliding scale and it's located less than a block from Shortstop Deli. My last test was in January (negative for everything); when was yours? Sitting in that room is panic time, but it's a good kick in the pants. Two weeks after the blood is taken you go back for the results. Either way, you deal with them, and hopefully adjust your behavior. Call them: 273-1513. Gannett (255-5155) does it as well, but if you're worried about paper trails and bursar bills, you should go to Planned Parenthood.

Now that that's out of the way, we can get to the bigger issue: people with HIV/AIDS. Whether or not you know it (yet), people you know have HIV. Schoolteachers, bus drivers, professors, nurses and caddies have HIV. Some of them are very lucky and have afforded anti-retroviral drugs. The UN estimates that two million years of life have been saved in the U.S. because of HIV-suppressors. But this benefit is not evenly shared: African-Americans are less than half as likely as whites in America to get anti-retroviral therapy. So they die sooner: African-American women 25-34 die of AIDS more than they do of anything else. And across the world these disparities are more extreme. Almost none of the five million infected people in South Africa get therapies, and life expectancy has recently dropped there by two decades.

And for our friends who will enter fields that interact with the pharmaceutical industry, like finance, law, marketing and biomedical sciences: we have to be serious for a moment. When 39 drug companies sued South Africa in 1999 for planning to make generic versions of patented drugs, the industry claimed, "if we can't get high returns, we can't cover the costs of making these life-saving drugs." Before all the free-marketers and hedge fund managers sign on to that argument, an anecdote: in the 60s, AZT was invented at the National Institutes of Health, but researchers couldn't find a good use for it. Around 1985, scientists at the National Cancer Institute worked on it and found it was practical for HIV treatment. A subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline ran the clinical trials and applied for a patent. Manufacturing cost them $0.60 cents per daily dose; they argued that they needed to charge $8.00 per daily dose. And, for years, big returns on a publicly-funded and created drug went into private pockets, while those who needed the drug got nothing. This hasn't changed. The 39 company lawsuit was only dropped when the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a South African group, prepared to enter evidence on the extent of public support for drug companies. Please don't get rich by exploiting AIDS: we should sell lifesavers to drowning people for cost.

When Cheney and Edwards debated in 2004, Gwen Ifill asked them both what they would do, as vice president, for black women who were 13 times more likely to acquire and die from HIV than white women. Cheney was surprised at the numbers, and Edwards plugged Kerry's health plan. And this story is a lot like most of HIV/AIDS' history, a disease that was (is) ignored because it was killing drug-users and gay men, a disease that's considered something other people get, a disease that we blame people for acquiring. Tens of thousands of people were dying, but Reagan didn't say "AIDS" in public for years. And Reagan isn't unique in this; the stigma of promiscuity or addiction remains with HIV and its victims. And this brings us back to you: when were you last tested, and why has it been so long? Are you convinced that only people unlike you get HIV? Your blindness is high-risk behavior, similar to abstinence programs that hope kids won't have sex.

Bush has promised billions and delivered a few hundred million, and he's required abstinence education programs that are 19th century in their worldview. Mentioning condoms - god forbid distributing condoms -can result in your funding being pulled. This, despite the success of high-profile condom distribution in places like Uganda, where the health minister stood on busy street corners giving out condoms.

The TAC (www.tac.org.za) has rallies of tens of thousands, all wearing "HIV POSITIVE" shirts. You've probably seen a billboard with celebrities wearing those same shirts, and Zackie Achmat, TAC's director, is usually in there somewhere. Listen to them, because ignoring HIV/AIDS is the riskiest thing you can do. Get tested, get informed, get active. We're in a position to change how many pregnant women get nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission. We're in a position to change policies and save lives. Start with your own blood test and base your concerns on the level of treatment you'd demand if you were positive yourself. We are all positive.

Jeff Purcell is a graduate student in Africana Studies. He can be reached at jlp56@cornell.edu. Brutal Honesty appeared Mondays.

Archived article by Jeff Purcell