The prevention

Sex education is paramount and must begin before the onset of sexual activity of adolescents. HIV infection is a sexually transmitted disease and one contaminant sexual intercourse can transmit the disease to healthy partner. The only means of prevention is the use of condoms during sex with partners whose HIV status is unknown.

It can also be transmitted in injecting drug use with contaminated material. It is necessary to use injection equipment for single use in France, this material is available in pharmacies without a prescription.

HIV infection progresses to AIDS, a disease fatal if not treated early enough. An HIV patient will be monitored regularly by a medical team and treatment will be offered in a timely manner.

 The screening

A person infected with the AIDS virus must be detected as soon as possible on the one hand, to take all precautions so as not to infect sexual partners, on the other hand, so that it can benefit from medical monitoring and the initiation of appropriate treatment at the best time.

It is logical that at any risk sex with a new partner which is not known HIV status and without condoms, HIV testing is requested. Pregnant women will have during their pregnancy an HIV test with other tests (toxoplasmosis, syphilis, rubella).

The supervision of a person with HIV

A person with HIV (vis-a-vis HIV) remains as a first step in good health but it is necessary to monitor the infection of the regular dosages of CD4 cells and viral load ie the number of virus in the blood. The patient will be followed medically and psychologically and will be regularly informed about the evolution of her infection, it may permanently contact the medical team which has supported.

The antiviral treatment

At a certain point in the evolution of the disease, when the CD4 decline significantly and that the viral load increases, the medical team will propose an HIV positive patient to anti-retroviral treatment. It is now composed of 3 drugs, known as triple therapy. Much progress has been made to simplify the number of tablets and frequency taken daily. However, it remains binding having to take treatment every day for many years. It is essential for a person with HIV to understand the value of triple anti-AIDS and preventing the abandonment over the years because of side effects or fatigue.

It is important that it be prepared and that she had discussed with his doctor. According to the proposed medications, side effects will vary. It is important to distinguish the side effects fairly common in early treatment (digestive, headache, fatigue.) And often fade, effects that may occur after several months or years of treatment (increase of sugar - diabetes), lipids (choléstérol.), changing the morphology, which may have an impact on risk of cardiovascular disease (myocardial infarction, stroke ,…).
It will particularly reduce cardiovascular risk in keeping or regaining a normal weight, taking well-balanced meals, having regular physical activity. It is essential to stop smoking, anti-tobacco consultation will be advised among smokers infected with HIV. The combination can delay the progress of HIV infection to AIDS. Despite the side effects, the patient can lead mostly normal lives.
It is essential to follow the treatment properly, according to the prescription of the medical profession and every day, regularly, at set times, with or without meals. This is the first treatment initiated which has the greatest chance of being effective. We must not let it pass. A treatment failure sign the emergence of resistance to the virus molecule prescribed.
He is represented by a resumption of viral multiplication and a decrease in CD4 lymphocytes. The failures of treatment are almost always caused by poor adherence, ie poor monitoring of prescription medication: forgetfulness, hours taken not observed. sometimes antagonistic combinations of drugs (which can have side effects if taken together). It will sometimes change drugs, the risk of failure will be greater. When it appears an infectious disease or cancer, they will be treated as though there were no HIV infection. 

This description is the more technical of two documents. The other document is called A TREATMENT FOR AIDS. Please read that document first.

AIDS is a social issue. Throughout the world it affects millions of individuals in a variety of living conditions and in societies of varying incomes and resources. A successful treatment for the disease must be available to these persons in an effective form. The goal of this article is to outline how clinical treatment can be accomplished world wide in a period of less than two years from today

The creation of a treatment program consists of determining the configuration of a single machine to combat the disease, to duplicate the machine in the thousands, to distribute the devices in a clinical environment, and to make the individuals aware of their availability. The machine is a simple design. It extracts blood from the client at a continuous rate, creates a set of interference grids through which the blood passes, and returns the blood to the client, cleansed of adult HIV. Extracting blood and transporting it through the process is not a difficult task. Our current application of clinical kidney dialysis has already solved much of the mechanics. Since the advent of diagnosed AIDS, the process that prevents viral contamination between clients has also been resolved. The basis of my clinical approach is the adaptation of techniques used in clinical dialysis.

What must be developed is the actual mechanics of presenting the blood to the interference grids, and to develop these grids into effective mechanisms. Separating the actual blood from the machine’s active elements appears to be the standard form of minimizing cross-contamination between clients. The physical conductor of the blood through the device would appear to best be in a disposable form, or in a form that is individual to the client. The clinical process of preparing the equipment for the next client would involve the removal from the machine of the conductor, and its replacement that is unique for this treatment session (disposable), or is the conductor assigned to the individual client. These alternatives will be determined by the economics of the clinical environment. The conductor would consist of what is essentially a tube that is responsible for accepting the blood from the extraction catheter, transporting it through a pumping apparatus, carrying the blood through the interference grid section, and discharging the blood into a return catheter to complete the circuit. It must be flexible to permit the pumping section to function through its walls, and in the grid section, it must provide the maximum transmission of the patterns into the blood.

The conductor, then is to be a blow-molded plastic vessel that may contain some very specific geometry, and in some sections would have a very specific thin-walled profile (grid section). By using blow-molded conductors ensures the minimum cost-per-client for the clinical process. These conductors may prove to be a difficult thing to mass produce using blow-molding techniques, but the technology available to the industry indicates there to be no barrier here to the development of the clinical system. To understand the grid section that actively destroys the virus cells requires a grasp of the physics and the medium. The physics again is simple in concept. A set of light beams is emitted by individual lasers. The beams travel from the lasers through the membrane wall of the plastic conductor, and through the blood. These lasers are positioned in sets to permit each set’s beams to intersect while passing through the blood. The region in the blood where a set of beams intersects is an individual grid, and each grid slices a cross section of the blood as it travels inside the grid section. The optimal condition for these grids is for each grid to occupy an entire cross section of the conductor, allowing no blood to pass through the conductor that does not travel within each individual grid. Thus all the blood will pass through each grid. The grids are to be lined up along the conduit’s path in the grid section.

 
Each beam is created by one laser. Lasers are to be used for their stability of emitted frequency. This stability must be maintained to a high level of confidence, and my opinion is that the temperature of the lasers will require some form of external regulation. Thus, a water bath or some more elegant means of temperature control for the lasers of the grid section will be included in the clinical machine. 
As the beams converge within the blood, their discrete frequencies dissolve into each other in a manner described by a very specific mathematical model of interferometry, which is a large word, but a well-understood physics principle. Lasers themselves could not be designed without this understanding. Diode lasers or some similar forms of solid-state lasers are indicated. Here again, every compact disk player has a diode laser that reads the disk. The technology is well known and easily applied to the clinical application. The mathematical model is the key, and actually the only real research required to institute this program.  
The model then consists of a generated field in space (the grid section) in which the beams converge and blend, with the result being a region filled with energy that cavitates matter in three dimensions. Roughly, the waves of the converging beams act upon each other to create pockets that are sized to mimic the volume of individual adult HIV virus shells (virophage). The energy of the beams is discharged into all of the physical components of blood as each travels through the grid. In a properly configured grid, the form of energy presented to the blood’s components is easily absorbed by the human components, but the viral material sustains sympathetic vibration related directly to size, and are fractured or pulverized. By supplying sufficient energy, the assurance of total destruction of the included virus cells is possible, returning only dead adult virus to the body as the client’s blood is returned.
Blood contains many components that react to the beams by absorbing them, reducing effectiveness. Each of the major blood components requires a set of beams and a discrete grid. Their combined obstruction to the process is eliminated. Red corpuscles absorb one band of light and transmit others. By tailoring one grid to accommodate the red cells, their obstruction is eliminated. Another grid is tuned to the best frequency family to ignore the white blood cells. This selection of grid frequencies can become as detailed as needed to prove clinically effective. By encompassing the scope of blood components and including individual grids in the grid section for each, the clinical device can ensure that the exposure of no viral cells is occluded by adjacent human structures. Since there is very little resemblance between the physical size and shape of viral cells and those of human blood, there is a very great expanse between the threshold of this type of energy required to destroy the viral cells and the minimum energy required to injure human blood cells. It means that once the proper frequency sets and patterns are mathematically developed, constructed and applied, there is very little risk of damaging the blood. The amplitude and intensity that may be applied, range to the level of brutal to the viral cells, yet the blood will be unaffected. 
The choice of frequencies is a matter of physics. Interferometry is based upon the blending of two or more separate frequencies. To create the energy boxes of so small size requires that the set of frequencies for each grid be of emissions of a very small frequency separation for each grid. The band for each grid’s emissions is very broad. It means that the frequency selection is almost open. Light frequencies are indicated since they do not harm human cells and are shown to destroy virus cells. Within that band, the choice is unlimited. Harsh x-rays or hard ultra violet frequencies need not be used. 
Cost of these grids is almost negligible in mass production, easily less than one or two thousand American dollars per grid section. The financial issue is based upon the determined requirements for the electrical and thermal conditions of the components. This may prove to be sizable, as stability in this process is paramount, especially when combined with the prerequisite necessity to perform in adverse and varietal international conditions. To be clear, the electrical and thermal requirements are not in need of new technology, they are just expensive. Another advantage to this clinical process is that it can cheaply, rapidly and easily be reconfigured to be effective against any virus form, once the virus cell’s physical configuration is known. It can be adapted to mutations, though I believe that the original device will prove effective for all forms of HIV at once. This feature permits the shipment of these machines to the crisis center of any new virus outbreak, where they can be configured in the field with minor software or hardware refit, and be effective in a time span of less than a week. One machine could see application toward a dozen virus species in a decade, and should be designed to do so. Philosophically, since the technology can combat viral leukemia and Ebola as readily as HIV, its funding and distribution are more acceptable in some social structures, and are universally justifiable.
The application of this clinical approach to virus-based crises is only a treatment, not a cure.  
Also, its process does not interfere with those measures of control through pharmaceuticals, and gives the client more opportunity to cultivate antibodies naturally. It may provide an individual with sufficient time to develop a clone-able antibody that would constitute a cure. When these grids increase in size to insert an entire human, then this clinical treatment becomes a cure.  
The pressure to enlarge the grid size will be driven by the industrial application of the technology. Since blood is a complex fluid, the conversion of clinical equipment to eliminate viruses from industrial fluids is simple, while keeping them chemically pure. The pharmaceutical industry requirements alone will drive development. Eventually, grids a meter across will control virus flow through both drains and water sources, improving the human condition. 
Development of this technology also does not interfere with the research being continued for biological treatment. The individuals involved and the equipment resources are different. This development program will use laser technology and electronics in separate laboratories. This treatment program will be independent of pharmaceutical programs, so no currently active resources will be compromised. 
There is a threat in our world for combatants to resort to viral warfare. Since the form of virus cannot be determined until the event, there are few means currently available for military medical staff to respond. This technology has the capability to treat the soldier in field hospital conditions, or in severe quarantine. The technology is configured to be portable, and can be useful in treatment within days of contamination. An armed service can for the first time expect that its soldiers in the field can be saved from this form of assault.
 

AIDS can be treated for now, and in the future be cured using the process described here. Most of the current uses of this technology are in another field of science, and the adaptation of use against viruses is a new idea.

Infectious viruses share an elemental life cycle that includes a period in which the virus is a protein shell that encloses DNA molecules, and which has a connector that attaches to human cells through which the virus can inject its DNA into the human cell. The key factor that indicates this treatment is that the efficiency of reproduction in viruses is primarily supported by that virus’s shell (called a virophage). Any strain of virus in a human will have only one size and shape for the shell for its entire population. So it is with HIV, and we can use this to destroy the virus because, of all the properties of the virus, HIV’s shape and size are the most significantly different physical factor from any and all human cells.

Thus far any process that guarantees the physical destruction of the DNA inside HIV will also affect human DNA. Viral DNA is only active when already inside a human cell and we have not found any manner to destroy it once active. The majority of research is trying to prevent closure between the virophage and our cells. This clinical process follows that approach using mechanical force rather than chemicals.
Physics creates a model that defines space in discrete three dimensional boxes and is capable of providing energy to these boxes, which is keyed to the volume of each box. The research would define those boxes to equal the volume of an HIV virophage. It would create an energy field and use the energy to destroy every virophage in the space. This type of physics is called diffraction, and it expresses the interference of conflicting waves.
Ocean waves can be exampled as they are watched from the beach. Surface energy comes toward the beach from many directions at once, and waves collide. As you walk along the beach, you can identify where the energies of all the waves combine to enhance each other; it is a huge, high wave front. Yet nearby, those same waves have not combined as well and cancel each other. This is a jumbled, turbulent, low area. For any wave form of energy, this concept is in place. With higher frequencies such as light, the event of the colliding of waves is referred to as diffraction.
The clinical process would create its own waves in a controlled chamber. These waves would use diffraction theory to distribute the energy into HIV virophage-sized boxes in the chamber, with enough power provided to each box to rupture or otherwise destroy the HIV virophage’s protein casing. As a virophage travels through the field, it assumes the space of one of the boxes and its shell resonates with the energy of the field. That resonance will shatter the shell. Since no human tissue even remotely contains that same volume, they will not resonate. In the human tissues, the energy is distributed, dissipated in a manner not possible for the virophage, which must absorb all the energy. As the energy passes through the blood it contacts all the human components, yet they aren’t the same size as the HIV virophage so the energy doesn’t “stick” to the red cells, the white cells, nor anything but HIV. When the energy does contact HIV, it shreds it at a molecular level.
Think about holograms. They are images created by interference patterns, and much research has been directed toward understanding their use of diffraction . A hologram’s image quality and resolution are a directly related to high-frequency, better-defined illumination sources, usually lasers. Holograms most viewed by the public are recorded in a thin layer of polymer, yet there are types of holograms that utilize a far thicker medium. Imagine a hologram that has as its subject, the HIV virophage. What I propose is very closely related to that concept.
Instead of generating a likeness of a virophage, we will project the interference pattern directly into a thick layer of blood as it passes through a machine. The interference is to create a phenomenon called ‘cavitation’ in a spatial volume level meant to match the HIV virophage. The cavitation contains enough energy to destroy each virus.
A well-known demonstration that this works is a commercial for audio tape. The televised version shows the First Lady of Music singing into a microphone. As the commercial progresses, the woman sings a single note for long duration. The amplified sound, which is emitted by an acoustic speaker, shatters a crystal goblet. Vibration causes the crystals to resonate within the goblet that tears it apart.
That vibration was created by an acoustic speaker whose active element is made mostly of paper. The glass is in most ways much stronger, but at selected frequencies it is far weaker. More importantly, the sound originated in human vocal cords and throat with no damage to either to break the glass, yet glass may readily cut flesh. So it is with the HIV. By selecting the proper frequencies to combine in the proper manner, the waves will pass through all else with little effect, yet they will be permitted to combine and crescendo along the surface of the HIV, tearing it apart.
Sunlight is jumble of frequencies that travel through space together. As these frequencies collide and mesh, they perform work on any material present at the event. This is how our eyes detect light, how sunlight’s infrared rays heat material. It is well known that simple sunlight destroys more viruses than any other factor in our lives. Sunlight is the natural enemy of viruses, and this clinical technology makes this effect more available to the HIV in blood.
There are many ways you can understand this technology in its more practical, every-day forms. Ask a medical ultrasound technician to explain how his instruments are capable of traveling through inches of skin and muscle, and in the midst of kidney nephron cells (some of your body’s most delicate and sensitive tissues) find and destroy hardened kidney stones. Ultrasonic jewelry cleaners use the principles to dissolve grime without affecting the metal or gems.
Theoretical understanding of diffraction theory has been around a very long time, yet the technology required to operate this in a clinical setting has only come to light in the past few years. The mechanics of creating a field of independent waves capable of this activity are challenging. Blood is full of human components that would scatter the waves and reduce the effectiveness. The need for funding to develop the clinical application will be significant.
This treatment is not limited to HIV. By identifying the volume of any virus, field and frequency adjustment can target any virus. Ebola, herpes, leukemia-forming viruses, the list begins here. My opinion is that in the course of killing the HIV in a sample, many or all the other adult viruses present may be destroyed.
Please notice I have used the word “TREATMENT” rather than cure. This process only destroys adult viruses, not affecting those in other phases of life cycle. What I propose is a clinical program that begins reducing the population of adult viruses in the client through a means similar to how we use kidney machines today. A client comes to a center, is hooked up to a machine that extracts his blood, cleanses it of HIV adult virophages, and returns it to him. After a cycle time shown to be effective, the machine is disconnected and prepared for the next client. Since the process is not chemical, concurrent treatment programs will not be affected. This clinical procedure becomes an additional tool to work beside pharmaceutical treatment without affecting them.
By actively reducing the quantity of HIV virophages in the client’s bloodstream, we reduce the effects of the virus. This would give the natural immune system a longer, greater chance to develop its own antiviral program and helps maintain the population of T-cells.
To do all this requires no large new breakthroughs in physical science. Diode laser technology need only be adapted to supply the waveforms and spatial relationships required. Most of us already use diode lasers (there is one in every compact disk player), and the versions required to do this work are only better defined and packaged.
 US government heavily subsidized a corporation that put HIV under an electron microscope, so we already have a very detailed geometrical survey of the surface. Actual models of the virus are well defined, with the orientation of the molecules known.
A cure using this technology would require the field to be large enough to envelop an entire animal. Since the life cycle of the virus is known, by administering the treatment repeatedly more often than the virus can reproduce, adult viruses never develop. After a twenty-four hour regimen in which the subject’s entire body is immersed in the treatment at specific intervals, any virus can be eliminated. By the most ambitious estimates a human cure is still years away, even for a baby.
It is possible for our technology to create a functional device within a period of less than four months, and a world-wide clinical network of these machines can be started within the year.
I do not have the HIV virus, and I do not know of anybody in my social world who has the disease. My obligation to my society is to present the technology that permits the society to choose how the technology is used.
I want you to be involved. Copy this letter and send it to a legislator. Contact a physicist and persuade the physicist to help. Convince your local AIDS support group to promote this course. First, read the companion article to this one called, The Clinical Application of A Treatment for AIDS , which is more technical, and describes how the clinical process can work world-wide. It also explains why the technology will be instituted in the future if only for commercial use. It justifies the funding for treatment to even those who cannot accept other forms of treatment for victims of HIV.

   You can not get a regular prescription for unapproved or experimental treatments. But there are several ways to get these treatments, including the Emergency Drug Release Program, friends, buyers’ clubs, and compassionate arms of clinical trials.

 
  
The Emergency Drug Release Program (EDRP)

   This program allows your doctor to try to get experimental treatments that have not yet been approved in Canada. According to government regulations, you can get these treatments when there’s a medical emergency or when standard therapy is not working.
Currently, your doctor applies, on your behalf, to Health Canada’s Health Protection Branch (HPB) to get a particular treatment. Staff at the EDRP negotiate with the drug company directly. They authorize the drug company to release, on an emergency basis, new treatments that are not yet approved, including treatments that are being tested. Apparently, the HPB is prepared to release most treatments for HIV as long as:

• There is information available on what dose is safe

• Your doctor has tried all the standard treatments and they’re not working
• The people at the EDRP feel that your doctor knows what he or she is doing

The EDRP is making some changes. It’s possible that in the future your doctor may be able to negotiate on your behalf directly with the drug company, with the government playing a monitoring role.

The EDRP gives a drug company permission to provide you with a specific amount of a treatment. But the drug company does not have to agree. And there’s no rule about who’s supposed to pay for the treatment if it is released, so it may be up to you to pay for it. This means that you may not be able to afford some treatments.
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Friends and buyers’ clubs

   Many people who have HIV or AIDS feel they do not have time to wait for officials to figure out what’s best for them. Some have found their own ways to get experimental treatments, such as sharing with friends. AIDS activists have worked hard to make it easier to get treatments. Many groups have networks to get certain treatments to people who have HIV or AIDS as cheaply as possible. In the USA, some private companies have been formed which sell treatments; these are called buyers’ clubs.

Buyers’ clubs do not all have the same source for treatments, so if you’re looking for a specific treatment, you may have to search for the right one. You have to pay for these treatments. Sometimes, in addition to getting drug treatments, you can buy vitamins and supplements at very good prices.

 
  
Compassionate Access

   In order to find out how well a new treatment works and what it may have bad effects, researchers study the treatment in a clinical trial. Each clinical trial has rules that say who can and who can not join it. Sometimes, a trial will have an extra section or “arm,” called a compassionate arm (or open), to allow people who can not take part in the study to get the treatment being tested. Usually the treatment is provided free until it’s approved. Very few clinical trials have compassionate arms, and most of those that do are restricted. For example, you may only be able to get the treatment if your T4 cell count is below a specified amount, or if you can not take the standard treatment.

   Generally, a compassionate arm is conducted at the same time as the Phase 3 trial, which means most of the side effects are known, and the treatment seems to have some benefit. In addition to restrictions, many compassionate arms slot or use a lottery system to determine who can join. So even if you qualify to be part of the trial, you may still not be able to join the compassionate arm. This may be because your name was not drawn in a lottery. Or it may be that the maximum number of people from the slot you were placed in (according to a set of qualifications) has already been reached.

 
Approved treatments (treatments listed on the Drug Formulary) can be prescribed by your doctor and are available through most drug stores and hospitals. Provincial or territorial health insurance pays many of your medical costs. But it does not always pay for prescription treatments. Depending on what province or territory you live in, you may get a “drug card if you receive social assistance (welfare, and so on.). Some people may qualify for a drug card without collecting social assistance. If you present your drug card to your pharmacist, he or she can get the government to pay for most approved treatments. If your province or territory does not issue a drug card, your doctor may be able to make arrangements with a pharmacy or hospital to have treatments provided to you free of charge. If you’re working and have a private insurance plan, you may be paid back for the cost of your treatments. If you’re working but do not have private insurance, you’ll probably have to pay for treatments yourself. Some people get treatments without having to pay, through HIV clinics or treatment centres which are part of larger hospitals. A few AIDS groups have emergency funds to help people pay for medication.

Private Insurance Coverage

If you have a job, or are on long-term disability benefits from work, you may have a health coverage plan that includes drug treatment and other benefits. The insurance company will pay for all or part of the cost of treatments prescribed by a doctor for you. Usually the list of treatments that private insurance companies cover is very similar to the provincial or territorial government Drug Formulary. Some insurance companies will not pay for some treatments, such as vitamin B12 (considered a treatment therapy for preventing malnutrition) for people with HIV, because they do not see them as drug treatments. Most complementary therapies are either not covered or only partly covered by private insurance. If you’re new to a job, you may not be able to get private medical insurance because of your HIV status. If you do have private insurance through work, this may be a factor in deciding whether or not to leave your job.

Off-label use of drugs

The term “off-label use of drugs” refers to any use of a drug for which the drug has not been formally tested or approved. Often a private insurance company will not cover the costs of off-label drug use. You should speak to your doctor about this, he or she may be able to find a way to get the insurance company or the provincial or territorial government to cover the cost.

Paying for yourself treatments

If you’re not on social assistance and are not a status Indian, and you have no private insurance - or if the treatment you want is not on the government or the OTC formulary list - you may have to pay for treatments yourself. If your job does not provide any insurance, you must either pay for your medication (which can come to several hundred dollars a month or more), or do without. If you can not afford to buy the medication you need, call your nearest AIDS group to find out about other options that may be available. The group may provide vitamins, supplements, and / or emergency funds, or may be able to find other ways of getting your medications covered.

HIV clinics

Certain treatments which have been approved for use by people who have HIV or AIDS, but which are still being tested, are distributed-province or territory-wide through HIV clinics or centres to other hospitals and clinics. You must have a prescription for these treatments and pick them up at a hospital pharmacy or special clinic, since they are not regularly available at drug stores. If you live in a rural area and travel to a city hospital in order to get a treatment, you may be able to arrange for a hospital closer to you to give it to you. You or your doctor can call an HIV clinic and tell them who you are and what you want the hospital shipped to treatment.  

Approved treatments are the ones the Canadian government says can legally be prescribed by your doctor and sold in drug stores.

This usually means that they’ve been tested according to government regulations. The tests are called clinical trials. Their purpose is to see how well the treatments work and whether they have any harmful effects (”side effects”). Clinical trials don’t always provide accurate information about the treatments being tested. Sometimes new information is learned about a treatment after it’s been tested. If a treatment meets the government’s standards, it’s approved. Because this process takes a long time and costs a lot, usually only large drug companies can put new treatments on the market. In USA and Canada right now, AZT, ddI, ddC, 3TC, and saquinavir are the only treatments that have been approved to treat HIV Experimental treatments are drugs or therapies that have not yet been approved but are being tested.

This includes many anti-HIV and related treatments being tested in USA and CANADA and elsewhere. It’s not yet known whether these treatments are effective, whether they have any serious side effects, or what doses are best. But there is hope that one, or several, of them will help keep people with HIV healthy.

Approved treatments are the ones the Canadian government says can legally be prescribed by your doctor and sold in drug stores 

This usually means that they’ve been tested according to government regulations. The tests are called clinical trials. Their purpose is to see how well the treatments work and whether they have any harmful effects (”side effects”). Clinical trials don’t always provide accurate information about the treatments being tested. Sometimes new information is learned about a treatment after it’s been tested. If a treatment meets the government’s standards, it’s approved. Because this process takes a long time and costs a lot, usually only large drug companies can put new treatments on the market. In Canada right now, AZT, ddI, ddC, 3TC, and saquinavir are the only treatments that have been approved to treat HIV Experimental treatments are drugs or therapies that have not yet been approved but are being tested. This includes many anti-HIV and related treatments being tested in USA and CANADA and elsewhere.

 It’s not yet known whether these treatments are effective, whether they have any serious side effects, or what doses are best. But there is hope that one, or several, of them will help keep people with HIV healthy.