Science sets its sights again on an AIDS cure

After 16 years of détente, scientists are once again ready to go to war with the AIDS virus. Unsatisfied with transforming AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic condition, researchers who once thought cure was impossible are once again ready to try. At a meeting today in Washington, D.C., just days before 25,000 people will attend the international AIDS 2012 conference, leading HIV researchers unveiled a “road map” to the cure. “The burden of treating millions of people for 40, 50, 60 years is unbearable, untenable,” says David Margolis, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a member of the International AIDS Society, which on Thursday released its strategy for a cure. “The cure agenda needs to be put forward in a serious way.” The early years of the AIDS epidemic were, of course, a bloodbath, with all of the casualties on one side. A diagnosis was universally fatal....