By JEFF DONN

BOSTON (AP) - The HIV infection rate has doubled among blacks in the United
States over a decade while holding steady among whites - stark evidence of a
widening racial gap in the epidemic, government scientists said Friday.

Other troubling statistics indicate that almost half of all infected people
in the United States who should be receiving HIV drugs are not getting them.

The findings were released in Boston at the 12th Annual Retrovirus
Conference, the world's chief scientific gathering on the disease.

"It's incredibly disappointing," said Terje Anderson, director of the
National Association of People With AIDS. "We just have a burgeoning
epidemic in the African American community that is not being dealt with
effectively."

Researchers and AIDS prevention advocates attributed the high rate among
blacks to such factors as drug addiction, poverty and poor access to health
care.

The HIV rates were derived from the widely used National Health and
Nutrition Examinations Surveys, which analyze a representative sample of
U.S. households and contain the most complete HIV data in the country.
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compared
1988-1994 data with figures from 1999-2002.

The surveys look only at young and middle-aged adults who live in
households, excluding such groups as soldiers, prisoners and homeless. Thus,
health officials believe the numbers probably underestimate true HIV rates
in this country.

Still, they show a striking rise in the prevalence of the AIDS virus from 1
percent to 2 percent of blacks. White rates held steady at 0.2 percent.
Largely because of the increase among blacks, the overall U.S. rate rose
slightly from 0.3 percent to 0.4 percent.

Smaller studies had shown rising infection rates among blacks in recent
years, but this study takes a longer and more complete look at changes in
the general population.

"I think it's very concerning," said Dr. Susan Buchbinder, who leads HIV
research for the city of San Francisco. "I think what we need to look at is
how we can reduce those rates and get more people into treatment."

She recommended a stronger focus on treating drug addiction.

The lead CDC researcher, Geraldine McQuillan, said she was encouraged to see
the HIV rate among younger blacks holding steady at just under 1.5 percent.

"It tells me we're making some headway," she said.

Other national data and published reports studied by the CDC showed that
480,000 HIV-infected people ages 15 to 49 should have been getting antiviral
drugs in 2003, yet only 268,000, or 56 percent, were given such medication.

Researcher Eyasu Teshale of the CDC said the gap represents "a substantial
unmet health care need."

Treatment is widely viewed as a central component in prevention. Powerful
AIDS drugs that came into wide use in the mid-1990s can knock down levels of
the virus in the body, reducing the chances that the patient will infect
others.

Nearly 1 million people in the United States have contracted the AIDS virus
since the outbreak began in the early 1980s. About 40,000 people test
positive each year, and more than 18,000 die. However, U.S. infections have
remained fairly level in recent years with the use of powerful HIV drugs.