Infected nonprogressors are providing clues to the control, and potentially the eradication, of HIV
Down the near-silent, butterscotch-orange hallways of San Francisco General Hospital's (SFGH) clinic is a waiting room populated by a handful of the poor and indigent. Inside a nearby treatment room a Hispanic mother with a drip line chats with her children. In the lull as clinicians take lunch, Steven G. Deeks points out two nondescript examining rooms: "These two rooms were, essentially, the [world's] first HIV clinic."
Today's calm is a far cry from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when these rooms were the front line in an epidemic that infected a quarter of the gay men in San Francisco. In those days, these halls teemed with people seeking rescue from near-certain death. The sense of desperation was palpable.
Skip Ordway, who has a checkup with Deeks ...
