What will it take to end AIDS pandemic?

Child with HIV/AIDS
An Indian child afflicted with HIV/AIDS read on the floor at the Naz Foundation Trust in New Delhi on July 21, 2012.
SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images

AIDS has been largely kicked out of the headlines by newer concerns like Ebola and avian flu.

But Minnesota still sees about 300 new HIV infections every year. And around the world, around 35 million people are living with HIV.

MPR News' Mike Mulcahy talked to Dr. Chris Beyrer, who was there at the beginning of the AIDS crisis and has spent his career working on the issue. He is the first gay man to lead the International AIDS Society, is in town to speak at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

A listener asked about the theory that the United States created the AIDS virus. Beyrer explains the conspiracies origins and how scientists believe the virus actually spread worldwide: