Mass-produced alternative medicines meet an increasing demand for health products, a trend which has been labelled the "commodification of health" [13, 14] : from the slums of Djakarta to rural settings in Burkina Faso, people believe more and more that they need pharmaceutical 'things' to protect their health and to treat illness symptoms. People living with HIV and AIDS are particularly uncertain about their health and their future: ART may be accessible and improve health now, but they wonder if this will be the case in the future. This uncertainty makes them an attractive market for the 'best of both worlds', alternative medicines, which come with assertions of 'natural' safety and 'biomedical' efficacy [15] . However the case studies presented in Marseille suggest that people especially want to use alternative medicines to delay onset of ART, treat opportunistic infections, restore health and alleviate adverse effects once on ART. Immuneboosters are popular, though our case studies suggest that PLWA are often ambivalent about alternative medicines that claim anti-HIV efficacy.