In a recent episode of the television show South Park, one of the main characters is infected with HIV. In an attempt to find a cure, he must continually deal with the public opinion that AIDS is no longer a threatening condition. He is told that his disease is “a disease of the 80s and 90s” and even that he is “retro” for being infected with HIV. But has this retrovirus truly become retro to Americans? If we take South Park as a social barometer, then it seems that the disease has been marginalized in the public eye. Public interest on the Internet regarding AIDS is declining as well. A recent government blog about Google search hits for the terms “HIV” or “AIDS” shows a declining trend over the past four years. Each year, fewer people searched for the terms “HIV” or “AIDS” on December 1st (World AIDS day) than the previous year. Why has the US public marginalized this disease, which twenty years ago was the terror of the nation? Searches for “AIDS” and “HIV” have decreased for four years running now. Have Americans stopped caring about this disease? Photo courtesy of Google, Inc. A simple reason may be that the media sensationalism of the disease has settled down. As people become accustomed to news, it ceases to be news, no matter how horrible the reality of the situation may be. The early media coverage of the AIDS epidemic focused on the fact that the disease seemed to infect only gay men. Some even believed that AIDS was the punishment for the lifestyles of gay men, and AIDS became known as the “gay cancer” by many after its initial discovery. In this way, AIDS aided U.S. society in demonizing the gay population in the early 1980s. AIDS was deemed a gay problem, and the rest of society could forget about it. Ryan White’s struggle against the disease helped dispel some of these myths, but many fallacies have persisted regardless, even to the present day. Many choose to ignore the AIDS epidemic, as they believe that they will not come in contact with the disease if they are not homosexual. AIDS may also be ignored because its prevalence in the U.S. is perceived to be decreasing. In South Park, the public seems surprised when the main character is newly infected with AIDS. In many regions of the U.S., taboo prevents open discussion about AIDS, and if people aren’t hearing about a problem, they tend to imagine that it is going away. In reality, 56,000 new cases of AIDS are diagnosed in the U.S. every year. This figure only represents the number of cases detected; the true occurrence is likely higher. Why does the public believe, then, that AIDS is on the decline? The apparent decrease of infection rate is caused by the fact that infected individuals generally live longer and healthier lives than they would have in the 80s, when the average lifespan following diagnosis was approximately three months. This fact is largely due to the success of many drugs in delaying the onset of AIDS after exposure to HIV. AIDS advocates are victims of their own success, then, as the myth has arisen that AIDS will no longer kill infected individuals. This belief is wrong; AIDS is a lethal disease. Drugs do a great deal these days to slow its progress, but HIV has the uncanny ability to develop resistance to these drugs and overwhelm the body’s immune system, which invariably leads to death. One additional aspect of fading public interest in AIDS, sadly enough, may be the lack of infection of a public figure. The movie star Rock Hudson was a famous AIDS victim in his time, and his death helped shock the nation into action against HIV. Rock Hudson is relatively unknown by today’s youth, who grew up after the passing of the star. These days, when most people think of celebrities with AIDS, Magic Johnson is the first name that pops to mind. This former basketball superstar retired after being diagnosed with HIV and began working towards a cure for the deadly virus. Indeed, in the South Park episode, the character with AIDS must travel to find Magi