According to Sweet, in 1995 she was signing two death certificates a week, and most of those dying were around 30 years old. People's attitudes about AIDS has also changed. AIDS fell off of the top 10 killer list in the United States in 1998 and this has resulted in some premature optimism. According to statistics presented by Sweet, six out of 10 Americans now believe the nation is on its way to defeating the epidemic. There will not be an AIDS vaccine anytime soon though, Sweet said, and this attitude makes fund raising very difficult.
Fund raising is still very important in the fight against the epidemic.
This is due to the fact that much research still needs to be done, and the medicine which caused the death rate to slow can be very expensive. The type of people infected with the virus has also changed over the last 10 to 15 years. It is no longer the disease of homosexual men. Those contracting the virus from heterosexual contact has gone up 96 percent from 1988-93, according to statistics presented by Sweet. Caucasians becoming infected has also gone up 21 percent in that time period, and the rate of infection in African Americans is up 60 percent.