AIDS In 1988

Editor's Note: We are posting this article, originally published in the October 1988 issue of Scientific American, because co-author Luc Montagnier will share the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.As recently as a decade ago it was widely believed that infectious disease was no longer much of a threat in the developed world. The remaining challenges to public health there, it was thought, stemmed from noninfectious conditions such as cancer, heart disease and degenerative diseases. That confidence was shattered in the early 1980's by the advent of AIDS. Here was a devastating disease caused by a class of infectious agents - retroviruses - that had first been found in human beings only a few years before. In spite of the startling nature of the epidemic, science responded quickly. In the two years from mid-1982 to mid-1984 the outlines of the epidemic were clarified, a new virus-the human immunodeficiency virus (HN)-was isolated and shown to cause the disease, a blood test was formulated and the virus's targets in the body were established. [More]

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