Nevertheless, the drugs, though powerful, are not the magic bullet that scientists had hoped they would be when they came on the market in 1996. HIV has been able to develop resistance to every combination of drugs that now exist. When the virus in a person's body becomes resistant to all possible combinations, full-blown AIDS can no longer be kept at bay. Jones, who got sick in 1993, is on his last three-drug combination. He is resistant to all others.
Vaccines are the next hope for stopping the epidemic.
But Laurence says he thinks it won't work. But prevention efforts have had, and continue to have, problems with censorship and money. Algaze says the Bush administration has allowed very little funding for HIV prevention in the United States, even though it's evident that the message is not getting through to many people, particularly young gay men and African Americans. They are coming from all over the country to read names and add new squares to the Memorial Quilt, which has done a lot to raise AIDS awareness in the United States since it was first spread out on the Mall in 1987. The quilt will not be rolled out for this anniversary, however, because like the epidemic itself, it has gotten far too big.