@ Nightz, some of what you said is true. To start off, I'd like to say that I've been a nurse for more than 10 years (15 this month to be exact) and have seen AIDS treatment evolve greatly. I'd like to commend you on the subject matter. Actually, people with HIV have a suppressed immune system and are subject to rare opportunistic infections. The pneumonia that you speak of is not the same type in non HIV individuals. The pneumonia that HIV patients are subject to is a different strain, a rare type, called pneumocystic carinii. Now , what determines if a person goes from HIV to AIDS is their T-cell count. If it falls below 200 then they are said to have full blown AIDS regardless whetheror not if they have any other infection. Once the T-cell count drops the chances of them acquiring rare infections increases 100 fold. Once they begin to get attacked by the onslaught of the infections then the diagnosis changes.Again as a public health nurse in an urban area, most of the population that I see is black and I enjoy educating whenever the opportunity arises. If you'd like more info on the suject you can go to http://www.cdc.com and click on the AIDS link. Another addition I'd like to add is that people never"officially" dies of AIDS, the death certificate will always list first the cause of death, say TB as you mentioned, followed by the phrase " a complication of AIDS" and everything else is listed in order of compounding effect. In general people never die of TB nowadays unless they are homeless or without insurance. This is a travesty especially in the US which touts themselves as such a rich nation.