CHICAGO�For the past six years, Andre Fuller, a 36-year-old Black male, has had full blown AIDS. The former addict admits to having sex with men and women in exchange for drugs.

With the assistance of the South Side Help Center, Andre has put those dark days behind him. "I�m not living with AIDS, AIDS is living with me. That�s the attitude I have and those who find out that they are infected should take that same attitude," Andre said.

"I thought that I couldn�t get HIV/AIDS and that it was something that people caught and got rid off. Now, I take 26 pills, 3 times a day," he added.

Those on the front line in the war against AIDS say the battle rages. Experts say:

� 1 in 50 Black men and 1 in 160 Black women in America are infected with HIV;

� Although Blacks only represent about 12 percent of the U.S. population, among those with full blown AIDS 40 percent are Black men, 61 percent are Black women and 62 percent are Black children;

� A Chicago Department of Public Health AIDS study found 69 percent of all pediatric AIDS cases in Chicago were among Black children;

� AIDS is the number one cause of death for Black men and women ages 25-44, before heart disease, cancer and homicide.

Some 20-years into the AIDS epidemic, too many Blacks are dying from the disease, say doctors, activists and politicians.

The reasons? Lack of awareness due to AIDS myths, lack of funding of community groups, lack of access to expensive AIDS drugs and treatment, and a lack of attention from government are some of the problems activists and medical professionals face.

"This is not business as usual, that�s the biggest thing I see. This has never happened before to any people in the history of the world," stressed Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, Nation of Islam minister of health.

In an article in Positively Aware, Philip A. Hilton, of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, Inc., argues that Black America�underserved and dependent on a failing public health system�was probably the least prepared as AIDS spread in the late 1980s and 1990s, through unprotected sex and intravenous drug use.

The media first painted AIDS as the disease of gay white males�a characterization some doctors and activists never agreed with�and that image stuck. The gay community mobilized to get attention, funding, change behavior and provide information. Infections among gay white males have fallen, but Blacks remain disproportionate AIDS victims.

"As HIV/AIDS rises among Black men, it has fallen among white men. The Black community has not had access to treatment, prevention and awareness because they do not know where or how to get the funds to implement such programs," said Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., during a Dec. 4 congressional Town Hall meeting on AIDS in Chicago.

A Congressional Black Caucus HIV/AIDS initiative secured $245 million in funding in the year 2000 budget, for prevention, research and treatment programs in Black, Latino and other ethnic communities where the HIV/AIDS epidemic is raging.

More than 200 Black health care providers, social service organizations and community leaders attended the town hall meeting, with its theme "Our People, Our Problem, Our Solution."

Rep. Jackson told the group that all predominately minority organizations with HIV/AIDS programs are eligible for funding. In the past, such funds have gone to older, better staffed white organizations, often run by gay males.

The National Minority AIDS Council warns that government officials are "becoming complacent about prevention in minority communities."

Even a June 1999 report from the Gay Men�s Health Crisis of New York City, which showed a substantial drop in HIV infections among homosexual men, noted that "Black and Hispanic gay men were less likely to engage in risk reduction," despite the onslaught of prevention and education messages from the gay community.

"Government health agencies should abandon their useless and unproductive blame-the-victim charge of complacency and get busy with the task at hand�translating the AIDS prevention and education message into language and imagery that have major impact in minority communities," the council said.

Dr. Barbara Justice, a New York-based physician, sees changes in behavior as critical to stemming the epidemic.

"We have always been the largest community affected by AIDS. It has always been a disease of heterosexual behavior and intravenous drug use," she said.

"I see young women in my clinic who admit to having multiple sex partners. We are in denial about the real issues of HIV/AIDS. We are not doing our job," she said.

That job includes working harder to organize the community and getting people to change their behavior, Dr. Justice maintains.

And as the HIV virus changes, there is a need for continued research and new drugs, as older drugs start to fail, she said. Then there "still is lack of accessibility to proper information on what drugs to take and for the most part where to get them," said Dr. Justice, who has successfully used Kemron, an African developed treatment to help patients.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), intravenous drug use is fueling the epidemic in Black communities. "It accounts for 45 percent of infections among Black women and 38 percent among Black men," said the CDC. In addition, a significant number of Black women with AIDS were infected through heterosexual sex with a current or former drug user, the federal agency said.

"More workshops and informational sessions about drug abuse and HIV/AIDS are needed in the Black church and education institutions. Our African American leaders are now involved with the current AIDS epidemic, but drug abuse prevention is also needed in the Black community," said Kareem Abdul Lateef, who is HIV positive.

He is a full time volunteer at the Core Center, which provides counseling and other services to HIV/AIDS sufferers. In his spare time, the 51-year-old goes door-to-door giving out information about HIV/AIDS.

Collaborative efforts, like the NIA Plan, created by the activists, educators, health professionals and politicians are also under way. Named after the fifth principle of Kwaanza, "nia," or purpose, the plan aims to push Blacks to take more action, offers information on prevention, identifies barriers to treatment, develops clinical and behavioral strategies to battle HIV/AIDS, and offers advice on how service providers can work with traditional Black groups.

"We are diagnosed later and receive the worst care. Since we are the last to receive new medications and treatments, we die faster. We have had a sense of hopelessness, fear, denial and blame," said Phill Wilson, executive director for the Nia Plan.

"The funds that the CBC has allocated can be used to leverage the public and private resources to us for maximum impact and can mobilize our greatest resources�ourselves," said Mr. Wilson, who has been living with HIV for 19 years, and recently became a successful long distance runner.

Mr. Wilson also argues that strategies must speak to the faith-based tradition among Blacks, that includes churches, mosques and a general spiritual outlook on life.

"Too often, we hear that Black churches are ignoring AIDS. This simply isn�t true," said Pernessa C. Seele, CEO/founder of Balm In Gilead, a national organization that works with 7,500 churches.

For World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, the organization sponsored a live satellite broadcast about AIDS from New York that was beamed to Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit and Miami.

Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad argues that HIV/AIDS spreads because there is no widespread testing for the disease, leaving those infected to put others at risk. He also believes contaminated vaccines carry the virus, which is also transmitted through sex, intravenous drug use and contaminated blood transfusions.

"We need to insist, number one, that resources adequate to the problem be made available. Estimates as to how much it would cost to eradicate AIDS globally would be in the range of $40-$50 billion," said Dr. Muhammad.

"It�s just that for political reasons and for reasons of deliberate genocide, these policies have been ignored as though they don�t exist," he said.

Dr. Muhammad has lectured about AIDS since 1987, gone to Africa in search of Kemron, an effective treatment, helps patients and believes that with the vast numbers of people already infected, exponential infection growth is likely. That means, he said, more people infected over less time.

When the infection rates hit a certain level, the mode of transmission could also change, said Dr. Muhammad, who runs the Abundant Life Clinic in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Muhammad, Dr. Leonard Horowitz, British author Edward Hooper and others suspect AIDS came from contaminated vaccines�not monkey to human transmissions as establishment doctors contend.

AIDS is "on track for doing what it apparently was designed and released to do. That is take out a significant portion of the Black population of the world," said Dr. Horowitz, citing HIV/AIDS rates among Blacks and Hispanics. The former dentist, who holds a masters degree in public health and a masters degree in health education, blames U.S. officials for the genocidal plot in his book, "Emerging Viruses."

A new book, "The River," by Mr. Hooper, also raises questions about whether the AIDS virus came from early testing of contaminated polio vaccine in Africa in the 1950s. Similar questions were raised in a 1992 Rolling Stone magazine article, and a 1987 London Sunday Times article.

Among other evidence, Dr. Horowitz points to a 1969-70 Defense Department appropriations request for a $10 million, five-year study to develop viruses that mirror the AIDS virus.

He also points to connections between top officials, Henry Kissenger among them, and links to firms who handled the Defense Department study.

In addition, Dr. Horowitz and the co-author of his book, a former high level Food and Drug Administration official, charge the agency has been hindered from making sure that vaccines are safe.