Incredible advances in the treatment and prognosis of HIV
infections mean that a diagnosis is no longer quite as terrible
as it once was - and getting tested for it is far less fraught
with dread than it was a decade or two ago. But roughly 1 in 6
San Francisco residents who are HIV-positive doesn't know it,
and nationwide, the number is even higher - 1 in 5 Americans
with HIV, or about 200,000 people, is unaware of the infection.
That's bad news for those individuals who could be taking life-
saving drugs to stall their infections. It's bad news for their
communities, too, because people with untreated HIV in their
blood are much more likely to spread the virus than those who
have the infection under control. So testing has become a major
focus of local and national plans to curb the HIV epidemic. In
the past month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention began a new program to offer HIV testing in
pharmacies, and shortly after, the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration approved the first at-home HIV