HIV and the AIDS virus is a long way from a cure. The anti-viral medications available are helping afflicted people live longer, healthier lives.

Education and prevention is playing a large part; this is being pushed more and more in developing countries, where the infected population is high. Please remember that the countries with the highest infected populations are developing nations, who do not have the same understandings and easy lives as us in the West. We can preach prevention all we want, but it takes decades to see a change in society. Changes to societies which are so poor, war-torn, dictatorships and sick do not come with a "tut tut, should have known better" attitude from us.

Development of new technologies to help combat the spread of HIV and AIDS are also encouraged, for example: a new reusable syringe has been developed, which will not pass on either virus due to it's design. Researchers are also looking at the affected nations, to determine why the AIDS/HIV population is high and are aiming to remove some of these causes.

To combat one of the world's biggest killers, we need to attack it from all sides - treatment, prevention and hopefully a cure. The next big killers are tuberculosis and malaria, all of which are present in these countries with a high AIDS/HIV population.

I'm glad I had lunch before reading your post.

I was having lunch right when she posted it...but thankfully, I have a strong stomach.

Finding a cure for HIV, cancer etc would be a financial disaster for pharmaceutical companies and some of you would have to say "bye-bye" to your jobs.

Sorry both of you! Also sorry to appear to be making light of a very serious subject.

Well we should definitely stop trying, then.

It's not about stopping attempts to find a cure, it's about understanding that there are powerful people and companies out there who would do everything to prevent finding cures. Got it??

There's no need to get snappy! Sarcasm is ample.

que?

Phramaceutical companies want to sell pharmaceuticals, right?

That's how they generate income.

If they were to keep doing research forever, and never find a cure, how would that make a good business case?

I think what musings is implying is that medication for life brings in a bigger profit than medication to cure an illness, right?

Quite to the contrary, finding cures and vaccination for diseases is THE business of the pharma-industry ! Come over to the Oncology at Uni-Spital Zürich ! It in late 1988 was a rather small narrow place with just a small number of patients and two "Ober-Aerzte". It in the meantime has developed into a very sizeable affair with uncountable "survivor" on visit for check-ups and/or injections etc. Most "survivors" depend not only on continued medical care and supervision but of course also on medicaments in various forms. Let's take myself as an example. The cancer-surgery had some negative affects, beside having saved my life, so that I am depending on my monthly injection. And the stuff is not provided by the chocolates industry

Medical science in regard to HIV/AIDS is working on both vaccinations and cures. The vaccinations against smallpox, yellow fever etc did not ruin pharma-companies but rather made them the richest companies on the planet And so, the vaccinations and cures against/for HIV will be a TOP business for the pharma-industry of the future. ..... Let's not forget that many fairly healthy persons will get to the relevant places for vaccinations

And, add to this that Tubercolosis into the second half of the 20th Century was extremely serious and in quite many cases clearly deadly. If you now get, and people still do, get Tubercolosis, you will get medical treatment involving lots of pharmaceutical stuff !