By Jody K. Biehl

Remember when the world used to be terrified by AIDS? Or the 1980s, when the disease decimated much of Africa, not to mention a whole generation of gay men. Back then, condoms were king and abstention was considered a potentially life-saving decision. No longer. AIDS -- and in some cases condom use -- is slowly slipping from the developed world's radar. Despite the deaths of 20 million people in the past 22 years, AIDS, it seems, has lost its ability to shock.

"We've been oversaturated by it," said Norbert Brockmeyer, a champion of AIDS research and intervention who runs the AIDS clinic at Germany's Ruhr University in Bochum. "The media and the public have grown weary of hearing about HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus). And there is unfortunately a belief that the disease has been cured. That is a far cry from the truth and it could come back to haunt us."

Certainly, drug cocktails are now available to those who can afford them. And Magic Johnson continues to be the poster boy for smiling through sickness. But that's the problem. He keeps on smiling. No longer are we watching our loved ones break out in Kaposi's sarcoma and then turning into walking shadows as they slowly lose one bodily function after another. No longer are we afraid we will catch it ourselves. The pressure, it seems, is off. It shouldn't be, screams UNAIDS, the world body that tracks the disease. Every six seconds someone in the world gets infected. This year alone, 3.1 million people died from AIDS -- that's 8,000 a day, three times as many as died on Sept. 11 in New York. Yet there is no outrage accompanying their deaths.

Grim statistics

With the annual exception of World AIDS Day, which took place this week, the disease gets little traction in the media. Suddenly, we get blown away by the facts. Here are a few of the choicest, plucked from UNAIDS's latest report: In almost every region of the world, HIV infections are on the rise. In some areas -- like China, India and of course Africa (where 25.4 million people are infected) -- the numbers are enough to warrant panic. This year, five million adults and children became infected with HIV. It's the highest single-year figure ever and brings the total number of people living with the disease to a record 39.4 million.

"The trend is going in the wrong direction," said Mark Stirling, who heads the UNAIDS Africa support team. "We still need a quantum shift to take place to tackle this epidemic."

The steepest rises are far away -- mainly in East Asia, where HIV infections have increased by 50 percent since 2002. But the list also includes the not so distant Eastern Europe, where numbers are up by 40 percent compared with 2002. Most of those infected are in Ukraine and Russia, which were practically devoid of AIDS before the fall of Communism in the 1990s. Now, there are 860,000 people currently infected, UNAIDS reports. Right in the European Union's backyard.

Of these, a stunning 80 percent are under 30 years old. That's a huge portion of one entire generation -- the working generation -- unable to function. Most are getting sick from contaminated needles, but a stunning 30 percent are getting HIV from sex. That, says the report, is a sign "the epidemic has gained a foothold in the wider population." Some of the infected are prostitutes who sneak across the borders to work the streets of the EU.

Treatment options, unfortunately, are limited. Drug cocktails are, indeed, available, but at $5,000 to $12,000 a year, depending on the regimen, few can afford them. An average Russian makes about $2,400 per year, according to an August poll by Levada, one of Russia's largest non-government polling agencies.

The untouchables

By comparison, in Western Europe, where the infected grew from 580,000 last year to 610,000 this year, only 30 percent of HIV patients are so young. Part of the problem, says Brockmeyer, is that "people are no longer afraid they will die of AIDS and they are starting to take risks they didn't take 10 years ago." The problem is especially prevalant among gay men in their twenties. These men -- who didn't grow up under the shadow of AIDS -- feel "untouchable" says Brockmeyer and are taking the sort of risks that horrify gay men twice their age. That includes Bareback clubs -- where they engage in unprotected intercourse -- and add the risk of contamination to the thrill of casual sex.