AIDS: You Haven't Heard Anything Yet

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Slowly, as it touches more and more aspects of everyday life -- the education of children, marriage rites, sexual habits, health care and insurance -- AIDS will transform American society. "By 1991," says Michael Gottlieb, the physician at the University of California, Los Angeles who identified some of the first cases of the disease, "most people in certain cities will know someone who has died of AIDS." Indeed, the CDC announced last week that in 1985, AIDS jumped from 13th to eleventh place as a cause of premature mortality in the U.S. Adults now in their 40s and older remember growing up with paralytic polio -- avoiding swimming pools and crowds during epidemics, being subject to quarantines in summer camps. Today's children, says the CDC's Curran, will have other memories. "They are growing up in a society with AIDS."

CHART: TEXT NOT AVAILABLE

Credit: TIME Chart by Joe Lertola.

Caption: THE GROWING MENACE Cumulative number of U.S. AIDS victims in thousands.

DESCRIPTION: Lines indicating number of AIDS victims in total and heterosexual populations on scale of 0 to 260 for the years 1981 to 1991, with figures of man, woman and ghost.