| The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), is genetically programmed to do one thing: highjack the reproductive machinery of a human cell, then trick it into churning out as many copies of the virus as it can before the cell dies. The current best hope for the treatment of AIDS requires that patients take a number of different drugs, each of which interferes with certain steps of the HIV infection process. |