HIV: a Nobel discovery

From ABC Science Online, 27 November 2008:
Dr Jonathan Anderson saw his first patient with HIV in 1987 as a GP registrar in the UK. The man was sick but no one could work out why, until he was tested for a new virus that was only just emerging into the medical consciousness
Five years earlier, two French researchers, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, isolated a new human retrovirus from the lymph nodes of a man with swollen lymph glands.
It was the first time that scientists had identified a link between a virus and a host of opportunistic infections caused by damage to the body’s immune system. This condition would later be called AIDS — acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
On 10 December, the researchers will receive the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for the profound effect this discovery has had on the prevention and treatment of AIDS over the last 25 years.
In that time, while a cure has been elusive, there have been huge breakthroughs in treatments and quality of life of Australians living with HIV. Read more.