I completely am disagreeing with parts of what you said. As an example I gave the girl who gets raped. What did she do? Others may choose not to use condoms or to share needles, and that's dumb, but not nearly deserving of HIV/AIDS.
I do agree with "delighted they may be close to finding a cure/vaccine for HIV/AIDS"
don't agree with "a lot of the people with that horrible disease brought it on themselves" for several reasons. "bringing it on themselves" is a term that connotes deserving what comes. And living with poor sanitation and malnutrition certainly does not deserve this, sex without a condom does not deserve this, homosexual intercourse certainly does not deserve this, even shooting drugs does not deserve this.
don't agree with "I'd be happier to read we were closer on cancer, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, etc.", I think we should be attacking all these, the amount of resources we put towards research is just a tiny portion of what we should be spending, so we should be able to focus on all these areas at once. If I had to rank, I would go Cancer then HIV/AIDS, then Alzheimer's, then Parkinson's. But I don't think any of them should be ignored.