More Than a Million in U.S. Live With HIV

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:53 p.m. ET

ATLANTA (AP) -- For the first time since the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, more than a million Americans are believed to be living with the virus that causes AIDS, the government said Monday.

The latest estimate is both good and bad news -- reflecting the success of drugs that keep more people alive and the failure of the government to ''break the back'' of the AIDS epidemic by its stated goal of 2005.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that between 1,039,000 and 1,185,000 people in the United States were living with HIV in December 2003. The previous estimate from 2002 showed that between 850,000 and 950,000 people had the AIDS virus.