Although it is still important to develop an HIV vaccine, we have significant tools already at our disposal that can make a major impact on the trajectory of this epidemic.
You can have an epidemic in a state. You can have it in a region. You can have it in a country where the critical level of disease passes a certain threshold, and we call that an 'epidemic threshold.'
The 20th-century ulcer epidemic was a sign of good health in American people - good diet, strong acidity and healthy immune response actually make ulcers more likely. That's why businessmen eating giant T-bone steaks were prone to ulcers.
It's not a surprise that the mental health epidemic is affecting so many people because we can't escape this bubble from being on our phones and tablets.
The ideal thing would be to have a 100 percent effective AIDS vaccine. And to have broad usage of that vaccine. That would literally break the epidemic.
China is certainly an important player in the global economy, and a widespread AIDS epidemic would threaten that growth.
However, as a parent, as a grandparent, as a former educator, I know that these practices alone when we are dealing with young children are insufficient. We will never control this rising epidemic without greater accountability from the food industry.
As a nation we should commit ourselves not only to the fight against terrorism, but to economic justice, defeat of the AIDS epidemic and vestiges of discriminatory policies of all kinds.
Economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research and University of Chicago persuasively argue that one of the biggest reasons for the nation's current obesity epidemic is that food is now so much cheaper and easier to prepare.
I don't sing now, because I had polio when I was 15, bulbar polio. This was when the epidemic was happening. And I was lucky that it didn't affect my lungs or my legs. It went to my face and kind of paralyzed my vocal chords, and I wasn't able to sing. And they said I was very lucky that I would get over it, which I did.
