4WHAT REALLY CAUSES AIDS: AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The AIDS pandemic is likely to become the greatest catastrophe in human history. Unless a safe, effective vaccine is quickly developed, or the preventive strategies outlined in this book are widely applied, by 2015 one sixth of the world's population will be infected by HIV-1 and some 250 million people will have died from AIDS. Its associated losses by then will be more than those of the Black Death and World War II combined, the equivalent of eight World War Is.