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It is well to remember that AIDS is actually the final stage, the most severe end stage, of infection with what we know as the AIDS virus. AIDS is also generally accepted as a syndrome, a collection of specific, life-threatening opportunistic infections and symptoms that is the result of an underlying immune deficiency -- a deficiency not caused by any known conditions and illnesses other than infection with the AIDS virus. The acquired immune deficiency itself -- the "AID" part of AIDS -- does not kill. It destroys the body's capacity to ward off bacteria and viruses that would ordinarily be fought off by a properly functioning immune system, and it is the diseases, the opportunistic infections, caused by these outside agents that eventually kill the victim; or, death results from a form of cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma, that is far more aggressive in AIDS patients than among those who do not suffer from AIDS. Thus, one can say that AIDS killed the person, since the addition of the "S" defines a syndrome: the collection of diseases and symptoms that resulted from the weakened immune system. Putting it another way, one can say that the AIDS virus itself does not kill, nor does it generally cause the vario