The Clinical Challenges of AIDS and HIV Infection

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Abstract
Researchers trying to resolve the questions surrounding the AIDS epidemic may feel like Hercules trying to slay the Hydra: for every head that is cut off, two new ones grow in its place. Doctors have never treated their patients in a social vacuum, but the expectations and anxieties engendered by AIDS are bringing fundamental changes in clinical p-actice. Drugs are being raced from the laboratory bench to the bedside, health care providers are being forced to recognize new types of family constellations, and the general public is being shocked into awareness of the importance of prudent infection control policies. Clinical practitioners have had to deal with the ethical consequences of routine and arcane decisions as never before, knowing that yesterday's experiment or hospital rounds can become tomorrow's lead feature in the news media.