By November 2003, 40 million people worldwide – 5 million more than the year before – were infected with HIV. In 2003, three million died of AIDS, bringing the total number lost to the epidemic to nearly 32 million people, the size of the population of Canada.
This insidious disease continues to prove itself. When this virus turns on, modern medicine can attack and kill, but it cannot cure. HIV hides. It slips inside other cells and waits. It can wait in reservoirs for years, probably longer than a person would live after contracting HIV. So scientists are trying to lure this killer out of hiding, turn it on, and destroy it. So far, some latent virus persists no matter what physicians throw at it, because today's drugs cannot detect the hidden virus. Moreover, HIV does not just infect cells: It integrates into the host cell's chromosome and DNA.
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