As long as the epidemic didn't touch anyone close to them, many Americans found it easy to put AIDS out of mind. For all the suffering and pain and lives cut short, it just seemed like someone else's problem. AIDS was something that happened to ghetto dwellers, drug addicts or gays, not to middle- and upper-class folks who limited themselves to straight sex.
Now it's harder to ignore AIDS. When Magic Johnson stepped forward to announce that he had tested HIV positive, his plight suddenly seemed like everybody's nightmare. Johnson's claim that he picked up the AIDS virus heterosexually, rather than...
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