An author and reporter for a nationally-known magazine spoke Monday of the AIDS crisis which has engulfed the world for the past two decades.Laurie Garrett, medical science reporter for Newsday, spoke to a group of 180 people at 8 p.m. in Benton Auditorium of the Scheman Building. She said the AIDS quilt, started in 1985, now must be displayed in small blocks because there is no public space in the U.S. large enough to hold it.”I am going to take you through some great challenges today,” Garrett said. “I am going to take you on a visualization journey that probably is quite different from anything you’ve experienced in your life or seen in your own world. You’ve been very fortunate. I will hazard a guess that all of you come from a very fortunate background compared to the global community.”Garrett said there are 37 million active cases of AIDS in the world today with more than 17 million dead, and 70 percent of those deaths occur in Africa.”In 14 nations of the world, more than 10 percent of the population is HIV positive,” she said. “Why aren’t we paying attention? We have something in the neighborhood of 13 million AIDS orphans.”Those orphans, Garrett said, are running lawless in African villages, while prostitutes line the streets, and teenage fishermen, many orphans themselves, serve as role models to younger children.She said women who lost their husbands to AIDS often turn to prostitution, a lifestyle which promotes the spread of the disease they carry.”Survival is a marginal proposition unless they turn to prostitution,” Garrett said.The AIDS epidemic of today could be compared to the Black Death, a plague that wiped out 20 to 25 percent of Europe in the 14th century, she said.Garrett also spoke on topics such as the rising costs of medical care, pharmaceutical drugs and abuses by medical providers.”The real money is not being made so much in drugs that deal in curative medicine but in drugs that deal in the vanities of the baby boom generation,” Garrett said. “Hair loss, fat, feeling happy. Whoever comes up with the magic lipid sucker drug is an overnight trillionaire.”Julie Scholten, sophomore in veterinary medicine, said she agreed pharmaceutical companies don’t direct their attention on the right issues.”We are developing drugs that are just for rich people, people in America and Europe,” she said. “We’re not focusing on the things that really need to be taken care of right now because, like she said, it’s not a moneymaker. It’s really sad.”Garrett also spoke of diseases, such as tuberculosis and malaria, that are re-emerging in epidemic proportions across the globe, along with new strains of antibiotic-resistant diseases, such as AIDS.”Diseases that you thought were under control, like tuberculosis, are making a resurgence back into the spotlight,” said Angie Witt, food service worker for the Memorial Union. “Now we have to try to find another way to combat them.”