Who cares if the drug cocktails are inconsistent in their results? There are 100,000 people in the US alone on those drugs. At $15,000 per year, there is no reason to reevaluate their use on efficacy issues.

In fact, David Ho, the pharmaceutical industry's point guard on the Dream Team of AIDS therapy, is planning another "assault" on the virus. "We still don't know if it is feasible to eliminate it..." But he's going to try. what the hell, it just means subjecting more patients to experimental treatments while the drug industry has an orgasm about it all.

Ho's theory of what those drugs are doing is as full of holes as the HIV theory in general. Research continues to come out which contradicts his hypothesis. That hardly matters, though, as the mouths of both the patients and the press are anxious to swallow anything that sounds like good news, whether it is true or not.

The cells coming into the bloodstream following the PIs are not new cells, as Ho has continued to argue. Rather, they are old cells that are being called from the body's stores.

None of this matters much to Davie. He is making his bucks, the press is getting their story, the mouths that are demanding chemicals are getting them.

The medical complex is a massive parasite on the bodies of the dying. And it seems only bound to get bigger, as few care it is there at all.