Column: Virus Of The Millenium

True, it's unfair to classify viruses as man rather than woman; you can't even flip one over and look at its belly to check its gender. So the question is moot. Regardless, viruses are still pretty bad-ass in my book -- and they are well-deserving of some recognition (nefarious though it may be). Looking back over these past thousand years I see some keen competitors though. Isaac Newton, Hitler, Captain Stubing, The MAC card, Maury Povitch and Charles Schwabb have all had an enormous impact upon the realm of human existence. But on the whole, viruses have done a job on us all -- impacting our lives in an untold number of ways. They can make your nose run laps around your face. They can make you hallucinate. They can make your genitals fall off. And a virus can quite simply kill you -- without even caring. But the damned things are as invisible as George Bush's domestic policy. And getting killed by something you can't even see has got to ruin anyone's day. They're crafty as well. Fifteen years ago we thought that measles, the flu and the cold were tough stuff. But those innovative folks in virusland were gearing up for the future -- creating a newfangled, more powerful virus designed to survive the long haul. It would even have that added flare of sexual transmission. (Viruses love that.) So with three varieties -- one for monkeys, one for cows, and one for us -- HIV took the stage. And after a little test-marketing in selected populations, HIV is now causing a stir the world around -- crashing the proverbial party for all demographics (at least all those with fluids). It's as though the little buggers knew exactly when to hit us. We had become just a bit too comfortable in our E-Z Glider-with-built-in-radio-free-VCR-if-you-act-now-heat-massage chairs. We had begun to forgo our children's "impractical" childhood for our own Sharper-Image regression. And we had given up listening to the words of songs in order to watch their pictures on MTV. AIDS caught us with our pants down (so to speak) -- with our minds on the Soviet's and not on ourselves -- with our priorities all screwed up. Now the virus has the upper hand. And we're still sans clue. We don't even know if the damn things are animals or not. That gets me pretty ticked. Are they alive? Are they dead? Are they made of styrofoam or what? How could they do all this stuff if they aren't even as smart as plants? (Unless maybe they're like the clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles -- who actually are plants.) Experts say that viruses are just loose piles of genetic material -- like the parking lots after a Dead show. But that's not enough of an explanation for me. I want these things entirely out of my face -- if not the whole AIDS mess, then at least the common cold. (I wonder how many forests could be spared if we didn't need Kleenex except for when the toilet paper runs out.) Let's attack these little pieces of dust head-on. We can stop paying for submarines (only for a little while -- don't worry). And we can stop quibbling about the conspiracies of Colombian drug lords. Twenty years ago, we were able to send a delicate ball of flesh two hundred and fifty thousand miles into space to play golf on the moon (Alan Shepard, Apollo XIV). That was truly a feat. But if we could do that back then, surely we can nix this wimpy virus thing today. We're Americans, damn it! So I want to see money -- loads and loads of it -- thrown into this. I want to see a gargantuan Department of Defense stretching its oily tentacles across our whole economy. But here I mean a Department of Defense that defends us against real problems like HIV -- a Department of Defense that educates people to defend themselves with their intelligence. After all, condoms aren't a catch-all. The AIDS virus will fear nonoxynol-9 for about as long as nuclear warheads feared the concept of fallout shelters in the 1950s. And when the air raid wails and the stats increase, and the virus begins to adapt (they have a sneaky habit of doing that), a latex sheath will no longer a fortress make. Before the virus reaches the level of causing mainstream terror, AIDS research must become a massive national policy. I would hope that the statistic of one million Americans being infected by HIV right now (estimate -- U.S. Centers For Disease Control) would be enough to start us into action. You can figure out for yourself where our country may be heading by combining the facts that every known case of HIV has resulted in eventual death due to AIDS-related complexes and that there are 250 million people in the U.S. (read: 1 in 250 people at this time have HIV and will die.) Our prime interests must include finding a cure for AIDS and eradicating the virus -- immediately. And then Time's award will be open to the team that does it. Stuart Sperling is a senior Communications major from Rye, New York. Oh, The Humanity! appears alternate Tuesdays.

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