HIV/AIDSThe new great teacher""

tion could lead to complacency and to reductions in funding and prevention activities. Indeed, this finding highlights some of the most problematic issues in the HIV/AIDS field: how to minimize the development of resistant strains when the drugs must be taken with strict regularity; how to ensure quick access to potentially useful drugs without compromising individual safety; how to ensure equal access to treatment and prevention options for a disease which has its greatest impact on the poor and disadvantaged; and how to balance corporate profits with humanitarian concerns (as the activists’ Conference slogan “greed equals death” demanded to know). At the X International Conference on AIDS in Yokohama in 1994, another HIV treatment was the focus of media attention. The results of the ACTG 076 trial had just been released which showed that HIV-infected pregnant women could reduce the vertical transmission of HIV by as much as two thirds by taking zidovudine during pregnancy and delivery. 1 This finding also raised a number of complex social and ethical issues. Now that a treatment was available to potentially improve the health of unborn children, should HIV testing and appropriate therapy be offered to all pregnant women? should it be recommended? should it be made mandatory? and how could any of these options be made available in the developing world where the vast majority of HIV-infected