Yet more people die from heart disease and cancer and it is still debatable the causes. However, we know exactly what causes AIDS and HIV and it is completely preventable.
The other day someone seemed to say in a post that we were and are somehow obligated to treat the diseased when our duty should have been to round up and isolate the infected ASAP, to the best of our ability, while it was still a mysterious disease associated with homosexuals.
Even today we should quarantine the infected, no exceptions, and as for treatment: let those whose own behavior caused them to get the disease pay for it themselves (or pay for it with money from those giving out of their own means for that purpose) and reserve public monies only for those who were truly their victims (like aforementioned blood receipients).
But the poofters and civil libertarians made it into a civil rights issue and basically ensured the plague would run as out of control as possible.