2006年是全球首例發現愛滋病（AIDS）的第二十五年，至今有二千萬人死於這種愛滋病，有四千萬人感染愛滋病，它可以說是全世界最可怕的傳染疾病，但這個嚴重病菌也將被逐漸控制住。

This book shows how millions could have been saved and many millions more infections could have been prevented if the world had responded properly to the crisis. Peter Gill reveals how politicians and religious leaders in both the rich and poor worlds have failed in their duty to protect their people from the disease. Simple messages about safe sex and condoms have been consistently downplayed out of embarrassment or misplaced moral fervour.

Just as the world begins to wake up to the enormity of the AIDS disaster, the America of George W. Bush is threatening to undermine the global effort. The Christian Right has decided that sexual abstinence is the answer to the pandemic. Big business manoeuvres to protect the profits of the pharmaceutical industry against cheap AIDS drugs from developing countries. And the US challenges every other Aids initiative that does not square with its determination to export a conservative and Christian ideology. Twenty-five years on from the first identification of AIDS in America in 1981, this book at last fixes historical and contemporary responsibility for the tragedy.

Peter Gill recently led a major BBC campaign against Aids in India. He has been a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph in South Asia and the Middle East. As a TV current affairs reporter, he was one of the journalists who brought the 1984 Ethiopian famine to world attention. He then wrote the definiteive account of the politics behind that tragedy, A Year in the Death of Africa.