AIDS Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, better known as AIDS, is caused by the incurable HIV virus. AIDS is a fatal disease that deteriorates the immune system. There are two groups of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), HIV-1 found worldwide and HIV-2 found primarily in Africa. The HIV virus enters white blood cells, takes over that cell's reproductive system, and uses that system to reproduce itself. The white blood cell dies and the new HIV cells infect other white blood cells and repeat the process. If you have been infected with AIDS, you may not have any symptoms for the next ten years. The disease AIDS makes less serious illnesses more difficult for your body to control or eliminate because of the loss of many white blood cells in your body. The most common causes of death among people with AIDS are pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma, which affect 70% of those infected. AIDS is transmitted in three ways. Intimate sexual contact is most common. While direct contact with infected blood and dealings with babies from the fetus of the infected mother will also cause the disease. Despite some speculation, the disease cannot be transmitted through air, food, water or insects. AIDS is a matter of life and death. Having the disease AIDS is a sentence to a slow but inevitable death. There is currently no cure or vaccine for this disease. There are medications that have proven effective in slowing the spread of this deadly disease. We know enough about how infection is spread to protect ourselves from it. But too few people hear the AIDS message. Perhaps many simply don't like or want to believe what they hear, preferring to think that AIDS "can't happen to them." »..