Can AIDS be cured? The question could only be imagined a few
months ago. But participants at an international meeting on AIDS
here last week were jolted when some scientists said that
continued use for a few years of new drug combinations, which
already drive the AIDS virus to undetectable levels in the
blood, might eradicate the virus from patients' bodies. Drug
treatment could then be stopped forever for such people. A cure.
For now, there is only the hope of such a result. But Dr. David
D. Ho and Dr. Martin Markowitz take the hypothesis that a cure
is possible seriously enough that they plan to test it at some
point by stopping treatment of a very small number of infected
individuals at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New
York City and possibly elsewhere. Definitive proof of a cure
probably could not come for years. Failure could come sooner.
News that some scientists are seriously considering the
possibility that new drug treatments might not only control, but
cure AIDS has caused widespread exc