At San Francisco General, researchers are learning how to control HIV without drugs

Ever since Steven Deeks began treating HIV and AIDS patients at San Francisco General Hospital in 1993, he was drawn into their community and became especially interested in those whose illness didn’t behave as expected. Why did some deteriorate more slowly than others? Was their virus different, or was there something unusual about their immune systems? More than three decades later, Deeks is one of the field’s leading researchers and still sees patients at San Francisco General's Ward 86, one of the world's leading AIDS clinics. In that time, AIDS has killed more than 40 million people worldwide, even as HIV medicine has been transformed. Deeks watched combination antiretroviral therapy turn a routinely fatal infection into a manageable chronic disease, and prevention drugs make it possible to stop infections before and after exposure. But antiretroviral drugs suppress HIV rather than eliminate it.