ABSTRACT
In arenas other than economic, the claim that the contemporary era represents a qualitative break with the past should also be met with some skepticism. AIDS, which probably originated in a remote part of Africa, has spread around the world, but in terms of the number of deaths it hardly compares with earlier pandemics, from the bubonic plague in Europe during the Middle Ages, to smallpox which the Europeans brought to the New World, to influenza during the first part of the twentieth century.
