The story of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and its underlying cause, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, is not one story, but many. Each AIDS victim has different health problems, personal struggles, and losses. In the early 1980s, when the first cases of AIDS caught the attention of doctors and scientists, there was no known cure. Victims who wrote about their lives described becoming increasingly ill, watching sick friends die, and waiting to die themselves. As research progressed and the cause of HIV/AIDS was finally understood, drugs were developed that delayed disability, prolonged life, and decreased the spread of HIV. A positive diagnosis no longer meant death within two years but a slower journey through the disease. However, this journey often came with increasing health and disability problems and devastating medical and pharmaceutical bills. Decades after the first cases of AIDS shocked the medical community, no cure or preventative vaccine has been developed. With its cause and method of spread now understood, HIV/AIDS is a preventable disease. Yet it remains a major health threat in many parts of the world. In addition to disrupting the lives of millions of victims, AIDS has disrupted the lives of entire families, communities and entire countries. The epidemic brought confusion to politics and governments and quickly became both a national and global problem. While the story of AIDS is full of disease, pain, loss, and death, it is also full of care, determination, and hard work. Many dedicated health researchers have spent decades working to understand the cause of AIDS, develop treatments for its victims, and find ways to prevent and treat the disease. Even as AIDs... center of paper... around the world continue to search for a cure for AIDS, others are making surprising discoveries about its origin. Since it was first recognized in 1981, AIDS has killed millions of people. “It is the worst and deadliest disease humanity has ever experienced,” according to Mark Stirling, UNAIDS director for Eastern and Southern Africa. What's worse is that there is no cure or vaccine for AIDS. In September 2009, researchers announced the results of the first large, successful clinical trial of an HIV vaccine called RV144. The vaccine is a combination of two older vaccines and was found to be 31% effective at reducing the rate of HIV infection. Although the study was considered a “moderate” success, most health professionals agreed that it represented an important advance in HIV research. In recent years, antiretroviral therapy has shown significant reductions