The ravages of earth's deadliest virus have never been more apparent to myself and the other students taking Pathology 210 this semester under the direction of Dr. David Watkins and a team of dedicated researchers. The epidemic has assumed a sense of urgency in this class, even from the comfortable vantage point of a first world country far removed from the bubonic-plague level implications of AIDS that make it so disastrous in sub-Saharan Africa.

You see, this supposedly dry pathology course is officially titled HIV: Sex, Society and Science, and I can assure you that the middle two words in the title take up a healthy portion of the course load. Pathology 210 has taught its students, most of whom are not biology majors, a great deal about more than just the virus itself.

Mr. Watkins' jovial mannerisms and nostalgic reminiscing about his riotous escapades in Brazil belie the fact that he has, in fact, spent his professional life studying the human immune system, has lectured his students on the deadly virus and, simultaneously, has exposed those nasty little skeletons in the human closet that AIDS illuminates in all their embarrassing clarity.

What skeletons, exactly?

Well, as a recently dissuaded but formerly unabashed male chauvinist, I suppose the treatment of women would be a good place to start. While my instructors in Pathology 210 rapidly dismantled the cornerstone of my Dark Ages worldview — namely that the feminist school of thought was the philosophical equivalent of Satan — I realized that, against the emphatic wishes of my past self, I would eventually be writing something that mentioned, albeit in passing, the fact that AIDS clearly demonstrates that women's rights are a long way from being fully established. When a woman doesn't have control over the use of a condom during sexual intercourse, she is unwittingly thrown into a pathogenic shooting gallery that could very well cost her life, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia.

In addition to that, there is the fact that a great many people in a great many high places are denying that condom use even prevents the virus. By the way, it does.

But the point is this. HIV: Sex, Society and Science would have been more properly listed as a cross between the political science and biology departments, and this is exactly the interdisciplinary manner in which an issue as complex as the AIDS epidemic should be addressed.

Every aspect of the virus' most agonizing assault on humanity is interrelated with one or more of our innumerable societal flaws, and there has been no effort made in the class to keep the "science" and "society" aspects separate. This crossbreeding of the different characteristics of the pandemic has done two things for the students taking the course: First, it has ensured that I, an irreconcilable illiterate on the subject of pathology, do not fail.

Second, this broadened focus has also allowed students to gain an understanding of not only our deepest fears, but our deepest flaws, in addition to showing us how to confront them in a fundamentally humane and practical manner.

Giving women more rights in our society and encouraging it in the societies of others, using condoms, increasing research — all of these are steps in the right direction, and all of them are manageable.

To be sure, most literature discussing anything that causes suffering in the world winds up with an apocalyptic and horrendously generic admonition that if more funding and awareness are not aroused among the general public, some vague brand of "or else" will eradicate our beloved consumerist juggernaut society in no time at all.

However, AIDS is a virus that sheds illumination on problems infinitely more complex than its ability to sneak inside a T-cell. What is possibly most agonizing about AIDS is the fact that it is making fools of all of us, of the entire human race. When, in drunken episodes of unprotected copulation, we potentially condemn ourselves to a gallows that drags our suffering along a 10-year gamut of humiliation and fear, classes like those taught by Mr. Watkins and his fellow researchers become ever more necessary. Like all the problems wreaking their respective havocs, AIDS forces us take a look at ourselves, and so should the classes we choose to take.

Sam Clegg ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in creative writing.