Quest for 'holy grail' of AIDS drug treatment.

Last month Fred Gordon, an AIDS specialist at the Washington Veterans Affairs Medical Center and a group of researchers will ask the United States government to underwrite an audacious effort to answer the 'when-to-start' question. They plan to propose to the National Institutes of Health an international study that would enrol more than 9 000 people, children and adults, from poor and rich countries to determine at what stage of the virus it would be best to commence with antiretroviral therapy.