Today is World AIDS day – and there’s a lot of  rhetoric flying around about progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS, especially in overcoming fear and bigotry.

Except for at one school in Pennsylvania.

The administrators at the Milton Hershey School have single-handedly set back years of hard work tamping down the fear of those with HIV by denying admission to a boy who is HIV-positive, based on what can only be explained as fear, ignorance and bigotry.

The pre-K to 12^th grade boarding school, located in Hershey, Penn., was financed and founded in 1909 by the Hershey’s chocolate company tycoon.  It gives a free education to poor children and kids with behavioral problems.  It has beautiful grounds, first-rate facilities and a dedicated staff.  Its website is full of lofty language with talk of being "a caring community” and a school “that opens new doors for children whose families could not otherwise afford it”.

Unless apparently, the child has HIV.

The 13-year-old boy, described as an honors student, whose name isn’t being made public, and his family filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the school for discriminating against him.

The Hershey School said today in a statement that they can't admit him because “in order to protect our children in this unique environment, we cannot accommodate the needs of students with chronic communicable diseases that pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others.”

Say what? You have got to be kidding me.

The notion that you cannot place a kid who is HIV-positive in a residential school setting because he puts the community at risk is out of step with science, public health, and worst of all, real-world experience. 

Ryan White fought -- and won -- that battle in the mid-1980s, after the teen was expelled from his Indiana school for being HIV-positive. But all these years later, here we are again somehow.

We have known for a long time that you can work or live with someone with HIV with next to no risk. Sexual contact is the primary risk factor, but that is hardly a reason not to allow a boy to go to school.

Shame on the Milton Hershey School for denying this kid the chance the school has given to so many others with special needs for reasons that have no basis in fact.  Shame on the Milton Hershey School for discriminating against a young man who could bring much to their community.  Shame on the Milton Hershey School for invoking a rationale for discrimination that only resurrects the bigotry and fear that it has taken decades to get rid of. 

The school should do the right thing and do it today — admit this kid, hold a seminar soon on HIV and risk for their trustees, teachers and administrators and then renew their public commitment to “open their doors” to ALL who can both benefit and contribute to the school community by their presence.

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Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Workers hang a huge red ribbon on the North Portico of the White House ahead to commemorate World AIDS Day.

World AIDS Day is about recognizing how far we’ve come -- and how far we still have to go -- in the fight against a plague that has infected 60 million people and killed half of them. 

But today, now 30 years into the epidemic, a series of setbacks threatens to dash hopes for the goal of an “AIDS-free generation.”

“Just when we were beginning to make the most progress, the rug was pulled from under us,” says David Barr, a leading activist with the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition.

Through the efforts of activists and government leaders, 6.6 million infected people around the world are now getting the drugs that stave off death.  But just as important as the health effect for individuals is the discovery that the drugs drop the amount of HIV in a person’s blood to near zero so they seldom infect others. As a result of the widespread treatment, the worldwide infection rate dropped 25 percent in the past decade, according to UNAIDS.

In response to the heartening news, the UN pledged in June to raise the number treated to 15 million by 2015. 

But that won’t happen. In fact, far fewer people will soon be getting the lifesaving medication.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an international agency that pays for about half of HIV treatment around the world, announced last week that its last pledge round had fallen so far short of expectations that it will give no new grants until at least 2014.  It will also scale back on many of its current commitments. 

And here at home, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just announced that its latest numbers reveal that only 28 percent of this nation’s1.2 million infected individuals are getting the medications they need.  Twenty percent of the infected have never been tested so neither they nor their sex partners know of the danger.  The CDC called for more testing.

But even if people in the U.S. know they are infected, will they get treatment? More than 50 million Americans lack access to health insurance.  The U.S. does have the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) to get medications to those who cannot afford them.  But it is not clear whether or at what level Congress will re-authorize the program.

Even at current funding levels, the Kaiser Family Foundation counts more than 6,400 people in 12 states who are the waiting list for medications from ADAP.  Though financed by the federal government, ADAP is administered by states, and 25 states are considering cutbacks to these programs.

These major blows to the war on AIDS require more than a day of red ribbons to set right.

Read more by Robert Bazell:

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Robert Bazell is Chief Science and Medical Correspondent for NBC News.