AIDS treatments are improving, but no cure is likely in this decade, David D. Ho told a New York audience after accepting a newly created prize for medical research. Ho, director and chief executive officer of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Rockefeller University, received the Lewis and Jack Rudin New York Prize for Medical Research on Thursday (October 30) at the New York Academy of Medicine and delivered a lecture titled, HIV in 2010: What Will the Science Allow?
It was a theme he took on reluctantly, he said, given the difficulty of making predictions. The prize awarded to Ho was in recognition of his research on subjects including antiretroviral therapies, which have dramatically extended lifespans for AIDS patients by limiting viral multiplication.
Barring major new findings, Ho said, "I do not see us going from being able to control viral replication to a cure." But he added...