They cause serious, potentially life-threatening side effects, such as heart disease. And the wily virus has been able to quickly develop resistance to many of the new medicines. That's why scientists are still battling HIV on a number of different fronts, from designing new drugs to devising better ways of spreading the message of prevention. At this year's conference, the world's preeminent scientific meeting on AIDS, hundreds of new studies are peeling back the mysteries of the virus. But she hastens to add that the progress is incremental.
Science is still a long way from breaking the back of the epidemic, researchers say.
One good example of this combination of progress and frustration is the long saga of Ronald Desrosiers, professor of microbiology at Harvard Medical School and director of the New England Regional Primate Research Center. Back in the 1980s, he thought it might be possible to follow one of the standard routes used to develop vaccines for other diseases. Then, inject the weakened microbe into the body. Since the bug is still alive, it's able to stimulate a far stronger immune response than a vaccine made just from inanimate parts. And since it's too weak to cause disease, it's harmless.