Soundings Competition Winners

The global war on the overlooked terrorist

As the United States twitches at the mere sniff of a terrorist threat, some observers may note a dark irony in the fact that most of the weapons it is particularly afraid of have been developed by its own department of “defense.”

Weapons research, however, still goes on. It is a simple logic that says “Hey boys, if we don't invent it the baddies can't steal it,” but none the less one that seems to have escaped the world's leading military minds.

Perhaps unsurprising then, that while President Bush pours billions into a missile defence system to protect himself from the misuse of his predecessors' legacy, he refuses to close the door on a much more intimate threat to his countrymen.

There is a terrorist that is threatening the fabric not only of the United States but of humanity as a whole. A terrorist that enters its host silently and lies, inconspicuously consolidating its position, for 10 or more years, before launching its attack. By targeting the body's immune system, HIV performs the microbiological equivalent of flying hijacked aircraft into the Pentagon, destroying the very machinery that we have developed to counter such attacks.

No weapon yet exists to defeat this discreet invader, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that almost one million people in the United States alone may already be infected. By this calculation HIV could exact a death toll over 300 times greater than that of September's attacks on the World Trade Center.

This chilling statistic includes only those victims in the United States and only those who are already infected. The big picture is much, much worse.

Along …