“Not all battles are fought with a sword.”

This quote is on The International AIDS Memorial Quilt button.

It also has a picture of a sewing needle intertwined in a red piece of thread crossed over into a ribbon.

The needle is the first step in creating the designs on the individual segments of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Each segment represents the life, love and hope of each individual in its own way.

A significant portion of the quilt was on display at Hilton Coliseum two years ago. The panels filled up the entire Hilton floor.

As one walked in the midst of the many panels, a voice on a microphone read the names of the individuals represented in the quilt.

People admiring the panels seemed quiet. It was as if they spoke too loudly, they may disturb those who now rest in peace. The environment was a holy representation of those who had died of AIDS.

Seeing the Hilton floor covered in memories of these individuals gave one the full impact of a disease that has spread like wildfire in the last decade.

About 22 million people worldwide are living with AIDS.

That number will be at least 30 million by 2000.

Someone in the United States is diagnosed with AIDS every seven minutes.

The Centers for Disease Control reports that more than 500,000 Americans were diagnosed with the disease as of June.

The impact of the spread of one small virus on a human body is staggering. The rate AIDS is spreading is genocide of the human race.

However, not everyone diagnosed with HIV will die from AIDS.

Since 1987, when the first panel of the quilt was made, nine drugs have been available to fight HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Before, the only drug for AIDS treatment was AZT.

The nine drugs, which are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, include six RT (reverse transcriptase) and three protease inhibitors.

They can be taken in 100 different combinations and all help to disrupt HIV from spreading in the body.

These new drugs, two of which were introduced this year, are not magic. AIDS can’t be eliminated by swallowing a combination of a few pills over a few days.

They are not the ultimate cure for AIDS, but are more of high stepping stones that have proved to slow down or stall the spread of HIV.

This is significant progress for the millions living with AIDS.

These drugs have changed the focus of many AIDS patients from the prospect of dying to the prospect of survival and, eventually, a long, healthy life.

This is the life people represented on the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt never had a chance to fulfill.

Four panels of the quilt are on display at the Great Hall of the Memorial Union until tomorrow.

They are a commemoration of this week, AIDS Awareness Week, and are a reminder of how much this disease has affected the lives of those who died, their families and friends and those who are still living with it.

However, when Iowa State pays tribute to those who have died, it must not only honor the dead, but cheer on those who have a fighting chance to live.

The stigma society has placed on AIDS is that of a person receiving a death sentence. Living with AIDS isn’t about living with that death sentence.

It is about fighting that death sentence. It is about demanding another chance and filing more appeals. A person with AIDS doesn’t go to the electric chair because he deserved it.

Medicine hasn’t released AIDS patients from their death sentences yet, but it has opened the door for a lesser sentence and a second chance at life.

The pain, suffering and struggle AIDS has bought to us must not be forgotten. However, there is now more reason to hope than before.

Not all battles are fought with a sword. The sewing needle is used as the tool to remember those who fought the battle and lost.

But now, medicine has new weapons that will help people sustain the battle longer. Eventually, more weapons of the kind will help win this battle.

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Shuva Rahim is a junior in journalism mass communication from Davenport.