I remember the whoopla surrounding AIDS when it first became news in the United States.

I remember how several politicians and other leaders in our society jumped on the AIDS bandwagon and were wanting to contribute millions and millions of dollars toward finding a cure for aids, or, more accurately, to raise millions and millions of dollars of taxes to fund AIDS research.

Fact is cancer kills more Americans each year than does AIDS. Fact is heart disease kills more Americans each year than does AIDS. And, I read this week that, according to one public health expert, deaths tied to a drug-resistant staph infection may exceed those caused by AIDS this year.

I know some "innocent" people contract AIDS. I also know the three main ways AIDS is transmitted:

* by having sex with an HIV-infected person

* by sharing needles or injection equipment with an injection drug user who is infected with HIV, or

* from HIV-infected women to their babies before or during birth, or through breast-feeding after birth.

Obviously, the most effective means of preventing the spread of AIDS is abstaining from illicit sexual behavior and abstaining from sharing illegal drug-injection materials. The cost factor for that is relatively very, very low.

Three other diseases obviously are more deserving of our attention and money, it seems to me: cancer, heart disease and, now, staph infections. Who is going to lead the charge for this?