ABSTRACT
The impact of the AIDS epidemic on the Puerto Rican population has reached alarming proportions. No single component of the media includes all the information presented to the public, but the daily press leaves a printed record of all it has presented, so it can be studied in its entirety. Visual images, whether they are illustrations, photographs, caricatures or graphs, not only attract attention to an article in particular, but also convey messages in themselves. HIV infection can be avoided through behavior modification. Some means of treatment have been shown to modify both the infection and its transmission. The continuing emphasis on AIDS equaling death should be modified to reflect the current state of knowledge about the disease, such as that more seropositive persons are living longer without developing AIDS, and the relationship between AIDS and death is changing as more treatments are becoming available, and the condition is becoming more manageable as a chronic disease.
