RESEARCH, PEOPLE CAN REVERSE SPREAD OF AIDS

It was just a decade ago that Americans learned about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS first surfaced in the homosexual community and with drug users, but it has since spread to some heterosexual men, women and children.

Some progress has been made in the past 10 years - perhaps more in the realm of education and prevention than research. There is still no cure for AIDS, and only one drug has earned federal approval.

In heterosexual transmission, experts say a third to half of the cases involved sexual contact with a known IV drug user. Transfusions with tainted blood supplies also infected some people. Closer scrutiny of the nation's blood supply properly followed to ensure the purity of today's blood products.

Southeast Missouri is not immune to this deadly virus. Cape Girardeau County has had eight people die from AIDS since 1982. The county health department offers free AIDS testing and education.

Nationwide, the HIV-virus has infected an estimated 1 million to 1.5 million Americans. Of those infected, 174,893 cases have developed into AIDS since the government began keeping track in June of 1981. About 110,530 AIDS patients have died.

But the answer to arresting AIDS may not be money alone. AIDS research, prevention and education spending has increased from $6 million in 1982 to $1.7 billion. Other AIDS-related spending brings the total to $3 billion. That's equivalent to what is spent on cancer research and prevention. Ten times more people died of cancer last year than of AIDS.

We must also find effective ways to pay for the high cost of AIDS treatment. A New York Public Health Service survey estimates it costs an average of $90,000 to treat an individual with AIDS during the 18 months he is likely to live once the disease hits.

Cities, counties and states across the nation are grappling with the cost of AIDS treatment for prisoners. Cape Girardeau County faced this very dilemma last week, when a man who said he had AIDS sought arrest for writing bad checks in the county. Counties must pay "reasonable medical care" for inmates.

Public education has made a dent in the frenzy of fear that AIDS so often evokes. It has also helped to slow the rate of infection. But more people need to understand the life and death importance of practicing "safe sex," the importance of abstinence and the dangers of spreading AIDS through drug use.

Hopefully, medical research will soon find a cure for AIDS. Until then, an immediate way to slow this deadly epidemic is much more low-tech: Don't have unsafe sex with people you don't know. Abstinence, informed people and research will one day reverse the spread of AIDS.