task force is planning to become "even more effective''. That assumes a fact with which we do not necessarily agree. However, presumably that decision has been provoked by the spread of AIDS into women and the heterosexual community.

It was convenient for Bermuda to play down AIDS when it seemed to be confined to the homosexual and IV drug user communities. There was public evidence of a very uncaring attitude toward AIDS in the IV drug population and public demonstration of Government's refusal to devote a hospice to AIDS care. It will be difficult for any task force to convince the public now that Government cares and that it is serious about AIDS prevention, however it can be done. Of course, AIDS is a situation where no one will ever know how effective any task force has ever been because the lives it saves are invisible.

A task force in Bermuda can only devote itself to prevention and to make any headway with prevention it will have to be extremely public, more public than AIDS awareness has been in the past, and a great deal more daring. The task force will also have to be tough, tough enough to save lives by defying those who reject sex education and condoms.

The task force will have to take AIDS awareness to 10-year-olds in the schools because parents cannot be relied upon to face young children with anything as deadly as AIDS nor are they likely to admit that their children need what is essentially sex education at the age of 10. The task force may even have trouble convincing the Department of Education of that, but the 10-year-olds may be the ones we have a chance of saving because it may already be too late for anyone older.

The task force may never get to 14- and 15-year-olds because by then they know that they are invincible and their ears are full of headphones and their heads are full of the sex and drugs that pour out of the earphones.

The task force also has the unenviable task of convincing sexually active adults that condoms are the way to go because no matter how highly you think of your new partner, he or she might have been exposed to AIDS ten years ago.

We guess that, honestly, about 50 percent of the adult population faces that problem. Since abstinence is unrealistic when dealing with a health problem, the task force will have to make the actual use of condoms the manly thing to do and the womanly thing to insist on. The task force will know if condom publicity has had any success because it can easily determine the import figures for condoms.

It will be difficult for the task force to get past the objectors who say that condoms promote sex and, as it tries, it will have to ignore that obstruction.

If it is serious about success, the task force will have to take condoms out of the realm of asked for drug store items and make them free and available in places where decisions to have random sex are generally made, like bars. They will have to be readily available in schools, probably by law rather than by choice because some head teachers will be obstructionist, and, everywhere, they should be available without asking. We, of course, assume that Bermuda wants to save people. If it does not, the task force is wasting its time.