Nature sure has created some tiny monsters when it comes to
microbes—bugs that make us throw up, ooze pus, bleed out of our
eyes and cough up blood. But which take top honors (or
dishonors) for being the most lethal of all? HIV doesn’t kill
people itself. Instead, the virus shuts down a person’s immune
defenses—the tools used to fight off invading germs—by infecting
and destroying important immune cells called T cells. Once a
person loses too many T cells, his or her body can no longer
deal with other microbes that cause infections. HIV merely opens
the floodgates. Eventually HIV-infected people become overrun by
germs and die of lung infections, skin infections or other
diseases. We now have several drugs that fight HIV. They cannot
cure the infection, but they can keep it in check.
Unfortunately, victims of HIV have to take several of these
drugs every day for life and the drugs are very expensive. In
Africa and other developing parts of the world where HIV is
spreading most rapidly, most people don’t have