Minister for Health, Mr. Nelson Bascome told the House during Friday's debate, that it was important the Island not short-change people in need of help.

He was critical of the discrimination AIDS people had suffered at the hands of the community.

"Everyone has a right to privacy,'' he said. He deplored rumour-mongering.

"We must not vilify those who have been infected with the disease. They must have dignity and the opportunity to maintain a standard of living.

"And if an individual has the will to get, go to work and to go on then we should not discriminate against them.'' Mr. Bascome commended the Island's ability to track AIDS -- despite the adverse publicity the statistics sometimes attracted -- and steps the dental industry had taken to ensure instruments did not transmit the virus.

The Shadow Minister said future AIDS education efforts should focus on children and what they would like to see.

He said the situation was right for a commission, not only to advance policy but to train teachers and counsellors to support victims and the people close to them.

"The whole community must be harmonised so we can pull together to deal with this dreaded disease.'' Education Minister the Hon. Clarence Terceira recalled the early 1980s when ignorance of the disease, even in medical circles, was widespread.

He said Bermuda was ahead of other countries in its AIDS reporting and in its general empathy for victims, most particularly through the creation of Agape House.

"It doesn't exist like that in other countries,'' he said, adding that empathy stemmed in part from the belief in being "your brother's keeper'' but also from strong volunteer leaders such as Mr. Russ Ford, co-founder of STAR.

Dr. Terceira said there was a need for more teen sessions on sexuality and AIDS.

He indicated patience would see the day when some form of condom distribution in the schools was in place. Nothing could effectively be done until principals supported a plan.

"With improved communication, there is bound to be a change of view and feeling,'' Dr. Terceira said.

"It's not a question of distribution but a question of availability. Sexually active teens and those considering it should be informed of where to get them.'' Shadow Finance Minister Eugene Cox noted Health Minister the Hon.

Quinton Edness 's determination to come up with action plans and more money for AIDS education and suppression. He referred to the PLP's election platform to underline the fact that his party had recognised a need to spend more money on the problem, particularly on organisations already in the fight.

Mr. Cox said it was vital to recognise AIDS as a cost issue.

"If we wish to do anything about this scourge, we have to be prepared to spend money,'' he said.

And if Government puts in place AIDS-fighting programmes, it must understand that costs will have to be absorbed by people and companies.

He questioned Mr. Edness about the costs attached to his ideas. He called on Government to put forward an estimate of programmes to remove "this scourge from our community.'' He said costings would help planners determined what programmes have sufficient or insufficient support.

The Hon. John Stubbs welcomed the motion because "there is a lot of misinformation and confusion in the community.'' While the level of understanding of AIDS had increased in recent years, there was still a way to go.

"The principal problem is that the information doesn't get through to the people who most need it,'' he said.

Dr. Stubbs said Bermuda's regressive laws contributed to the AIDS death rate.

Making homosexual acts criminal led to a furtiveness in sexual relations that did not normally exist, and sometimes even to promiscuity. Dr. Stubbs said promiscuous sex heightened the AIDS risk in the highest risk group which then heightened the risk for the rest of the population.

He suggested a big step in AIDS education could be achieved through a Big Brother/Big Sister-type programme where adults could link with children in one-on-one relationships.

"We must recognise that effective control of diseases is in prevention and in protecting the high risk groups,'' he said.

It was important to transmit information in a way it could be used. Dr. Stubbs cited "brighter homosexuals'' who had changed their sexual habits to avoid AIDS. "It's beginning to show in the statistics,'' he said.

Dr. Stubbs said adapting to people's ways was the only way to appropriate foundation for any policy.

"Once people become sexually active, no amount of admonition is going to stop them,'' he said.

"We must get information to the high risk group if we're going to get this thing under control. It's a very serious risk to the integrity of this community.'' Dr. Ewart Brown (PLP) said he would like to know how many Bermudians have tested positive for HIV overseas, though he didn't think the statistic was obtainable.

Dr. Brown remarked that HIV was a strange virus, with blacks accounting for more than 90 percent of the Island's 247 AIDS deaths.

Unlike the flu which afflicts all who cross its path, the AIDS virus appeared to be hitting a strangely high proportion of blacks. Worldwide statistics, for example, showed a half million infected in Europe compared to nine million in Africa.

He likened the AIDS epidemic in Africa, where whole regions had been laid waste, to the neutron bomb, which kills people while leaving buildings standing.

Despite the positive efforts of volunteers, Dr. Brown said he had not detected a sense of urgency that the statistics would indicate is necessary.

The increasing death rate -- 57 percent in 1993 -- was so alarming that it "won't be long before we're losing numbers of people that is very high in proportion to the number of births.

"If that continues, the black population would be significantly reduced over time.'' Dr. Brown said physicians must be willing to take a lead role in working to eradicate the disease. He said every patient admitted to Hospital should be screened for HIV.

Mr. Leon (Jimmy) Williams (PLP) said AIDS threatened Bermuda's children.

Education was the key to helping them and tackling the epidemic and knowledge was the key to ending the discrimination produced by ignorance.

Mr. Williams said people must be compassionate for the victims of AIDS. And he warned that no one on the Island was safe from the disease.

Transport Minister the Hon. Maxwell Burgess said he had had enough of the disease after attending four or five funerals of friends and family who had died of the disease.

Bermuda had to fight the disease. He once said the Third World War would be against drug abuse but had come to see it against AIDS.

A key weapon in the war would be understanding of the disease. There was also a need for periodic "checkpoints'' to see if the Island was making progress against the disease.

The Minister said the disease was killing a particularly high number of young black makes.

"I'm sick and tired of losing my brothers,'' he said, adding that "the real crime will be to follow our speeches without action tomorrow.'' Ms Renee Webb (PLP) said she was very concerned about children affected by AIDS, particularly the more than 200 who had lost one or both parents to the disease.

She asked what could be done to cushion the effect of losing parents. In some cases, children were being discriminated against and ostracised in school because of their loss.

Ms Webb called AIDS a national disaster.

"Volunteers have done an excellent job so far, but the time has come where we must recognise that AIDS has reached epidemic proportions,'' she said.

Ms Webb agreed with the idea of a commission into the effects of AIDS. She said the disease was now spilling into the heterosexual community.

"If ever there was a time to call for action, now is the time,'' she said.

"Children must be made aware of what the repercussions will be.'' Mr. Trevor Woolridge (PLP) said he was concerned about the lack of real participation from the religious community in the fight against AIDS.

Church leaders' "ostrich behaviour must stop. They must stop burying their heads in the sand hoping it will go away.'' He denounced Christians who think all they need to do "is get on their knees... Know the facts. Get off your knees and get into the trenches. Follow the example of Jesus.

"The condemnation and the judgment stance of the church does not help.'' Mr.

Woolridge said he fully backed the moves of Canon Arnold Hollis of Somerset who has done "more than the collective leadership'' of the churches in his controversial AIDS-fighting measures.

Mr. Woolridge said he was disappointed about the churches' judgment stance, particularly those who think AIDS victims are being punished for their lifestyles.

"AIDS is about you and me and family and friends,'' Mr. Woolridge said to many shouts of support from MPs. "AIDS and HIV has no boundaries.'' Mr. Woolridge said that just because AIDS has hit a higher proportion of blacks is no reason for people to be less concerned.

"This is not a homosexual disease, it's not a drug disease or a prostitutes' virus. It's everyone's disease. Burying our heads in the sand only increases the risk. Too many of us have turned a deaf ear and blind eye to it.

"This is not a Government issue. This is a people of Bermuda issue.'' The same community support that existed for cancer victims was needed for AIDS patients, said Mr. Woolridge.

He reminded listeners: "You can't become HIV positive or get AIDS from someone sneezing or coughing, or from a kiss, or from swimming pools, or dirty toilet seats, or straws and cups, or mosquitoes and animals.

"Most people with HIV or AIDS got it by having sex or sharing needles with someone who was already HIV positive.

"Anyone who has multiple sexual partners without using protection is demonstrating irresponsible behaviour.'' People comforted themselves by saying they weren't homosexuals, drug users or prostitutes.

"But we must remember. It's not who you are, it's what you do.

"If the extent of your relationship is to go out to dinner or to a movie, come home and hold hands and just allow physical things to happen, without knowing the behaviour and lifestyle of the individual with whom you're having a relationship, you're behaving irresponsibly.'' He said it was "a crime and a sin'' the way insurance companies treated people with the AIDS virus.

He hoped it was not correct that insured people who got infected with HIV lost their cover.

People with AIDS should be able to buy insurance and die in dignity, he said.

Wealthy people without relatives should make their wills out to benefit AIDS work rather than a cat or a dog.

Black people made up almost 90 percent of those killed by AIDS in Bermuda, he said: "This is where the historically black church must take some leadership role.

"The black church must come alive and stop saying `I don't want to talk about it'.'' Preachers had to teach young people by example -- flowery words were no good if you were seen doing something you shouldn't.

It was "hypocrisy'' at a funeral of an AIDS victim when the preacher comforted the family, but had not brought education on the subject into his church. "Stop demanding that Government do something,'' he declared. "Do something yourself.'' God wasn't selective about who he helped. "But our problem is that we're selective in what we want to be helpful in.'' He believed in no sex before marriage -- abstinence was the safest way to avoid AIDS.

But things that were morally unacceptable once were now acceptable among youngsters.

And as Mr. Hollis told young people: "If you're not going to listen to what I'm going to tell you about refusing sex, for goodness' sake protect yourself.'' Before they said anything about HIV, Christians should ask themselves how Jesus would deal with AIDS patients.

Children as young as 13 were on the streets until about 3 a.m., he said. "And it's no longer the one selected area of Bermuda -- throughout this Island young women are offering their bodies for sale to buy drugs.

"We're in a mess. We're in a real mess.

"Preachers must come from behind the safety of their pulpits and get out here where the real trouble is.'' Preachers should tell young women they didn't have to have sex to be popular.

They should tell young men they did not make themselves men by making babies.

Black men and white men had to hug their children and show love to them. Mrs.

Grace Bell (UBP) said teaching abstinence alone was not appropriate for young people's real lives. Education and information was needed.

Sexuality was a taboo subject in Bermuda. More had to be taught in schools, who had probably not progressed since the 1950s.

If young people were not getting taught at home, the school had to provide education.

She stressed AIDS was spreading into the heterosexual (straight) community.

Worldwide, five out of 11 cases of new adult infection were among women.

The Caribbean had some of the highest figures in the world, and Bermudian men had "similar lifestyles'' to men there.

She urged Mr. Edness to consider special AIDS programmes for women. Mothers could pass the disease to their babies, she stressed.

Mr. John Barritt (UBP) said it was known how HIV was transmitted how how it could be avoided. "It is not one of life's little accidents.'' Education and condoms were the weapons to tackle the spread of the virus among youngsters.

Mrs. Lois Browne Evans (PLP) voiced an objection to the motion. She recalled her speech more than 20 years ago during a period of official concern about illegitimate births.

She had told her audience that hard drugs would soon be a much more serious problem -- and she had been proved right.

Her comments then had been turned into the "falsehood'' that she told people to "go out and fornicate in the bushes''.

Government had not done anything about hard drugs until there was a serious problem. The fallout was the number of IV drug users dead from AIDS.

Drug users and the homeless needed more places to stay and more facilities for treatment, she said. Government policies were not affecting the back of town.

She praised volunteers tackling the problem. Concrete proposals, not plans and programmes, were needed.

Ms Jennifer Smith (PLP) said Bermuda had to come to grips with the fact that many children did not get the right guidance at home.

Proper sex education was needed in schools, and not just "the birds and the bees''.

High school was too late to start teaching abstinence -- young people 13 and under were having sex.

The religious beliefs of various denominations should not stop action to reach out to young people, she said. Politicians had to provide leadership. Teaching abstinence and providing condoms could go together.

She praised STAR, hospice workers, the Allen Vincent Smith foundation and all volunteer AIDS workers.

The problem of AIDS orphans would have to be tackled by society, she warned.

Such children needed free counselling.

Mr. David Dodwell (UBP) said employers should draw up plans concerning the impact of fatal diseases on their workers. Awareness should be raised and attempts made to remove the stigma of diseases like AIDS. Professional help, maybe from the Employee Assistance Programme was available.

Mr. Ottiwell Simmons (PLP) said everyone was a potential candidate for HIV infection.

Education was the only formula that worked -- there was no medication. The jury was out, he said, on whether the virus originated in Haiti, Uganda, or in "the white man's laboratory''. He believed it was "very likely'' that HIV could be man-made.

He was also worried by the high proportion of black people who had died from AIDS. The figures could be wrong, he said. White Bermudians might go overseas for treatment and die of AIDS there.

But there was a similar dominance of black people in US statistics. Since AIDS did not choose victims by skin colour, there had to be another explanation.

He believed there was a relationship between AIDS and crime, drugs, violence and poverty.

"I believe it is a disease that is contracted because of some social behaviour.

"Black people in this country must not be at the lower social rung of the ladder, the lower economic rung of the ladder, and the people without political representation as far as the Government is concerned, and at the same time be the victims of this devastating disease. We can't continue like this.'' He stressed the Bermuda Industrial Union's role in AIDS and drugs education.

He said he had known a woman with AIDS who warned her lover of her condition.

He still sex with her without protection -- this was how emotions could lead to the spread of the disease.

The Hon. Pamela Gordon , Youth and Sport Minister, said "caregivers'' needed more attention.

She stressed the role that low self-esteem played in the starting of a drug habit.

And she called for help for loved ones left behind after the death of an AIDS patient, dealing with guilt and blame.

She criticised the ban on people entering the US if it was known to the American authorities that they had the HIV virus. People with AIDS needed to enjoy their final months, she said.

It was no good condemning people with AIDS. Instead Bermudians should think: "There, but for the grace of God, go I.'' Mr. Stanley Morton (PLP) said potential scientists, doctors, lawyers and other specialists might have been lost through AIDS.

People needed to have will power and think of the effect on their loved ones if they contracted HIV.

Dr. David Dyer (UBP) said the community had been slow to learn about the drug menace. Now it was slow to discuss the need for condoms.

AIDS was similar to heart disease in that most people acquired heart problems through their lifestyle.

He agreed the message about avoiding infection had to get across to children before they had sex. Maybe education should start in primary school, he said.

Condom distribution should be allowed in schools, he added.

It was "nonsense'' that white people were plotting to destroy black people with the virus.

Dr. Dyer said another area to tackle in the AIDS crisis was the children it left without parents -- and a country.

"Once we had young parents dying from drugs now we have young parents dying from AIDS,'' he said.

If the child's father was Bermudian, but the wife was not, and the marriage was less than three-years-old, the child would not be eligible for social insurance, Dr. Dyer pointed out.

"Surely that is a scandal in this day and age,'' he said.

AIDS orphans, he added, will be an ever increasing group, "growing in leaps and bounds''.

Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan summed up the debate, saying that as a father of three, he "lived in fear'' of the deadly disease, because you could not alter the normality of young people.

He could only hope they practised safe sex at all times.

Sir John said the debate was not intended to cause society to be "so "stressed-out that normal relations cannot exist''.

But, he said, "It is a sudden death when you find you are infected with HIV.'' The Premier read a candid AIDS article out loud to hammer home what were facts and what were myths.

Among the facts was, HIV can be contracted by vaginal sex as well as oral sex.

And kissing is okay as long as there are no open sores in your mouth.

Indicating he supported free condom supplies to young people, Sir John said it was time to overcome taboos if the community really wanted to prevent the spread of AIDS.

"We should have open minds as a society,'' he said.

Speaker of the House the Hon. Ernest DeCouto commended PLP and UBP MPs for the overall mood of the debate and their sincerity in approaching the topic.