Although the global HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to grow in many parts of the world, ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN HIV/AIDS research rank among the truly important advances in medicine in the past 25 years. Most important among these was the
| THE SEQUENCING OF THE HUMAN GENOME is the greatest advancement in medical knowledge of the past 25 years, although I’m not sure when it will lead to practical breakthroughs in our ability to prevent and treat disease. On that level, I think effective treatments for hypertension and heart attacks are the most important developments. As for the future, I look forward to significant changes in the medical paradigm, forced by relentless consumer demand for alternative therapies and the impending total collapse of the health-care system. I hope to see the rise of complexity theory in medicine, so we can understand the effects of herbal remedies and other natural products, and a backing away from materialism, so we can acknowledge mind/body interactions and the whole emerging field of energy medicine. ANDREW WEIL, director, program in intergrative medicine at the University of Arizona's Health Sciences Center in Tuscon. |
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identification of HIV as the causative agent of AIDS within three years of the recognition of the first AIDS cases in 1981. As a result, a number of other IMPORTANT ADVANCES ENSUED. A sensitive and specific HIV blood test was quickly developed and subsequently used both to protect the blood supply and illuminate the scope of the epidemic. Remarkable advances in UNDERSTANDING THE PATHOGENESIS and natural history of HIV disease facilitated the rapid development of antiretroviral drugs that have dramatically reduced HIV-related suffering and death wherever they have been used. I believe the most important medical advance in the next 25 years will be the DEVELOPMENT OF AN HIV VACCINE that can protect people from HIV infection or slow the course of the disease—and perhaps make them less likely to transmit the virus. Although we face many scientific, operational, and social obstacles, I am cautiously optimistic that we will succeed.
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Anthony Fauci, director,
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
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