issue of AIDS to the forefront in Bermuda. That is where it belongs. Well informed people who are involved in combating AIDS feel that the killer is a great threat to the whole of the Island. The truth, no matter how much we might dislike it, is that Bermuda has a major AIDS problem which we may be trying to ignore.

To his great credit the Minister of Health, the Hon. Quinton Edness, has taken the difficult path of trying to get the Country to face AIDS in a realistic way. It would be easier and, perhaps, more politically advantageous to stick his head in the sand. But Mr. Edness is doing his job as Minister of Health.

He is in the controversial forefront of the fight against AIDS. He has chosen not to bow to the bigots who oppose condoms or to the misquided people who would like to hide AIDS in the home. He has chosen to do his job as Health Minister -- to protect the health of all people.

Now it is time for everyone else to join in this fight. We must get over the hurdle caused by the phrase "sexually transmitted'' and get on with preventing a killer. Churches have to recognise that dead people cannot go to church. Educators must face the fact that they may be educating young people and then wasting the education by letting them die for want of a condom.

Parents have to face the fact that the young do engage in sex and must be taught to protect themselves by abstinence or by safe sex, whichever is appropriate to the young person.

We have to supply clean needles to anyone who might use IV drugs and condoms to anyone who might engage in sex. We have no choice because we are fighting a killer. This is not the common cold. This is a sexually transmitted disease for which there is no cure. You do not encourage sex by supplying a condom nor do you encourage heroin use by supplying a clean needle. Those are myths.

Condoms and clean needles do not prevent or cure AIDs, but they do curtail its spread.

Bermuda needs to get over stigmatising this dreadful disease. It is not confined to gays or Haitians or even to cockroaches. In Bermuda it is basically a heterosexual disease and much more of a woman's disease than it is in most countries. The path of the disease has never been typical here.

AIDS has to be faced squarely in Bermuda. The health authorities have to get over misleading the public. First, we have to stop trying to imply that HIV is somehow different from AIDS. A person who is HIV positive can give you AIDS but we try to soften the blow by implying that HIV is not AIDS.

We call upon the Health Department to stop the confusion and to stop minimising the problem and to call AIDS what it is -- AIDS.

We also call upon some of the public to stop implying that we can prevent AIDS without using the best weapons we have, condoms and clean needles.

People are dying.