Acquired Immune Deficiency syndrome or AIDS is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus. The late stage of the condition leaves individuals prone to opportunistic infections and tumors. Although treatments for AIDS and HIV exist to slow the virus’s progression, but, there is no known cure.

There is currently no vaccine or cure for HIV or AIDS. The only known method of prevention are based on avoiding exposure to the virus or failing that an antiretroviral treatment directly after a highly significant exposure, called post-exposure prophylaxis.

Congress and President Bush have done the right thing, lifting a disastrous nine-year ban that prevented Washington from using locally raised tax dollars on needle-exchange programs that help fight the spread of AIDS. Unfortunately, that still leaves in force an even broader and more damaging law that prohibits the use of federal funds for needle-exchange programs in the United States or abroad.

The country’s most important medical and public health organizations endorsed needle-exchange programs more than a decade ago, and such programs have proved highly successful all over the world. Opponents’ charges that needle exchanges would encourage addiction have turned out to be nonsense.