One of the things I realized quite soon in my diagnosis was that HIV is just another virus, and after HIV there will be other viruses. The only thing that makes HIV unique is that it raises all the taboos in our culture. HIV raises death and dying, sex and sexuality, raises addiction, raises disability and illness, all the things that as a culture and as a society we find very difficult to talk about. So it isn't surprising that people are very fearful and that people are very unwilling to focus on HIV and to get up to date accurate information about HIV.