The new wonderdrugs, the protease inhibitors, are following exactly the same course as the last wonderdrug for AIDS, AZT. It seems, of all things, they are toxic. Who woulda thunk?

The new drugs are having a tough go of it, but that doesn't keep them out of the headlines or out of the mouths of the dying. The protease inhibitors are showing yet more signs of doing odd things to the body. It is already know than they can cause diabetes and other strange changes in those ingesting them. Which side effects can you expect?

It is simply amazing that it would ever be thought that health could come to those who are ill through the ingestion of toxic chemicals. Given what it is that the protease inhibitors actually do in the body, it is only surprising that more problems have not yet come up.

Nonetheless, "researchers" are looking for more reasons to dump the drugs into the bodies of the dying. Since HIV remains in the bodies of those who take the drugs - hiding in dormant cells - there is now the ingenious idea of flushing those residual reserviors of HIV out of the patient. The plan? Nonsense, as usual.

The latently infected cells are to be coaxed out of dormancy so that they actively produce virus. The insanity of it is that there is already evidence that such latently-infected cells don't produce HIV, even when they are stimulated out of latency!

What does this mean for the dying? It means that they will be given even more drugs on top of the proteases, in order to cause something that is known not to happen!

It is all a parody of medical treatment, suitable for any Pythonesque spoof. The next thing we know they be combining drugs with vaccines. Anything to put more costly substances in to the bodies of patients.