This just in: Researchers have “functionally cured” a 2-year-old toddler of the virus that causes AIDS.

Who’s next? Perhaps it will be the adult who’s battled the virus for years, maybe decades, and who’s been living with the faint hope that a cure is on the horizon.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/03/health/hiv-toddler-cured/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The toddler, a Mississippi girl, is the first child cured of the virus that causes AIDS. Some observers are calling it a “game changer” in the three-decade-long fight against AIDS.

Remember when the disease was thought to be exclusive to gay men who got the virus through sexual contact? Many Americans scorned these patients, vilified them publicly. But since the first case was reported in 1982, the disease has spread its tentacles across the entire spectrum of the world’s population.

In 2004, I was privileged to attend the International Conference on AIDS in Bangkok, where I learned this stunning fact about HIV: The most vulnerable demographic group, the folks most likely to get the disease, were the wives of promiscuous men. Our group of journalists traveled from Thailand to Cambodia and to India, where we studied the impact the AIDS virus was having on people in that part of the world.

I learned in India about an outreach to long-haul truck drivers that is intended to educate them on the dangers of contracting HIV when they come in contact with prostitutes or other women while they are traveling through the country. That outreach includes extremely graphic material handed out at truck stops that shows what happens to certain human body parts when they are infected with sexually transmitted diseases.

The Mississippi toddler contracted HIV after being born to a mother who received no prenatal care and who, herself, had the virus. The findings about this stunning “functional cure” demonstrates just how the disease has progressed across our own population.

Let’s hope the little girl’s cure is a game changer.