AIDS: is race an issue?

Africans have encountered degrees of discrimination internationally--in Belgium India and the Soviet Union for example--which reflect fears of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The fact that the most prominent scientific hypothesis for the origins of the AIDS virus traces its start to the African green monkey has unfortunately contributed to the tendency of some groups to blame Africa Africans and blacks for the AIDS epidemic. Africans on the other hand frequently blame white foreigners. Efforts to find who should be blamed have too often substituted for effective action to prevent the spread of the virus. WHO has argued aganist AIDS-related travel restrictions adopted so far by at least 6 governments on the grounds that they do little to retard the entry of the virus and misuse resources which could be devoted to prevention. Because of the disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics among AIDS victims in the US there is anxiety that AIDS could become a racial issue adversely affecting the civil rights progress of past decades. In France spokesmen for the Front National an extremist right-wing party have attempted to link AIDS fears with ant-immigration sentiments.