HIV 30 Years

30 Years of HIV: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today

Published: May 20, 2013

There was no fanfare on May 20, 1983 whenScience published what is undoubtedly among the most important medical papers of the 20th century.

In the usual dry prose, researchers from the Institut Pasteur in Paris described a new retrovirus, which they dubbed lymphoadenopathy associated virus, or LAV.

It was, they reported, a "typical type-C RNA tumor virus" with a tropism for T-lymphocytes and was similar to -- but clearly distinct from -- human T-cell leukemia viruses, which had recently been discovered.

Today, we know it simply as HIV./.../