by Mary Hale

Created on: January 16, 2007   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

Even with the advances that modern medicine has been able to make in past few years, I find myself doubting that we will be able to create a cure for AIDS within the next ten years, or even the next fifteen years. I agree that there are medicine combinations that help the side effects of the disease and help to prolong the life of people infected with the disease, but AIDS is a virus - and lets face it, we have yet to manage to cure the common cold or flu.

A virus cannot be cured or killed in the same manner that a bacterial infection can be. The different antibiotics that are given to people infected with AIDS are basically used to treat the secondary bacterial infections that eventually kill the infected individual, not to treat the virus itself. I hope that I am wrong, and they do find a cure for this deadly disease, but so far their efforts have failed.

The AIDS virus is capable of mutating and becoming immune to the medications that are used to treat it. This is one of the main problems with finding a cure for this disease. Hopefully, using the same tactics that have worked to prolong life in infected individuals, modern medicine will be able to find a cure or at least a vaccine to prevent infection, however, I don't expect this to happen in the next ten years.

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