The Age of Aids

An epidemic's lessons

LIKE ANY epidemic, AIDS has been sweeping in its lethal reach. Its victims have included gay males, hemophiliacs, injection-drug abusers, heterosexual men, heterosexual women, and the babies of infected women. A two-part TV documentary by ``Frontline," scheduled to air on WGBH Tuesday and Wednesday this week, chronicles its toll and leaves viewers with no doubt that, with a vaccine still years or decades in the future, better prevention will be the key to keeping AIDS from devastating other regions as relentlessly as it has southern Africa.

Directed by Renata Simone for the Public Broadcasting Service, ``The Age of AIDS" marks the 25 years since five gay males in Los Angeles went to doctors with symptoms of immune-system collapse that set off alarms at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fair and comprehensive in its examination of AIDS's past, the film implies a lesson for its future: With forthright leadership, the disease can be kept within bounds. But if populous countries with emerging epidemics like Russia, India, and China do not muster such leadership the prognosis is grim.

At a time when President Bush is facing low approval levels, ``The Age of AIDS" is a reminder of what might turn out to be his presidency's finest moment: His commitment in his 2003 State of the Union of $15 billion over five years to help Africa and the Caribbean cope with AIDS. President Clinton also comes off well, both for making it a priority in office and for his efforts since. The contrast with the indifference of President Reagan is striking.

In Africa, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni saw the peril of AIDS early on and led his country in the ABC prevention campaign of abstinence, being faithful to one partner, and condom use. In South Africa, President Nelson Mandela did not provide leadership, and his successor, Thabo Mbeki, for a long time denied that a virus caused AIDS and resisted efforts to make AIDS drugs widely available.

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