The New Untouchables

Anxiety over AIDS is verging on hysteria in some parts of the country

There are 946,000 children attending New York City schools, and only one of them--an unidentified second-grader enrolled at an undisclosed school--is known to suffer from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, the dread disease known as AIDS. But the parents of children at P.S. 63 in Queens, one of the city's 622 elementary schools, were not taking any chances last week. As the school opened its doors for the fall term, 944 of its 1,100 students stayed home.

That evening, hundreds of anxious parents gathered in the school's airless auditorium. They chanted, "Two, four, six, eight, no AIDS in any grades!" and waved placards...

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