AIDS fear in rural America.

'QUICK, HONEY! Grab the cows, hogs, and chickens and let's git! AIDS is a-comin' to the farm!" Or so the National Commission on AIDS (NCA) would have us believe in its third and latest report. The NCA is the propaganda unit in the "War on AIDS"; it takes testimony from homosexual activist groups, releases periodic pronouncements, and gives us few statistics and many anecdotes. In the latest report, the NCA chairman, Dr. June Osborn, states: "Many parts of rural America are about to be blind-sided by the epidemic." The report refers to an alarming" rate of increase in rural areas, 37 per cent last year. A breakdown of the data is not available for previous years, but it can safely be assumed that this increase is significantly lower than that of the year before, which, in turn, was significantly lower than that of the year before that, because that has been the almost universal trend among U.S. AIDS cases-overall, by risk group, and by geographic location, the epidemic is flattening.

The purpose of this propaganda is to draw attention away from the fact that in urban areas-that is, the places where the epidemic hit first and hardest-AIDS cases increased a mere 5 per cent last year. It obfuscates the reality that AIDS is for the most part a big-city problem spread by activities tolerated more in New York and San Francisco than in Des Moines and Oshkosh. But don't just blame the NCA for using this ploy. A severely mau-maued Congress has appropriated $2.9 billion over the next six years for AIDS treatment on top of current ADDS funding, which already outweighs that for every other disease. And yes, it is being touted as a rural-relief bill even though the great majority of the money will go to major cities. Folks outside those cities have compassion for AIDS victims, as should we all, but sooner or later they-and the public as a whole-are a-gonna git tired of bein' fed hogwash.