The need for a search for a proximal pathogenic principle of human AIDS

Some of the unexplained aspects of HIV/AIDS epidemiology, virology, and pathology (6, 13) may thus be due to a lack of knowledge of the basic virology of the virus complex and its pathological interaction with cells of the host. There may be no need to call upon anomalous immune responses, vicious transactivating activities, or new virological or biological principles if we can first do the basic virology of the disease-inducing viruses. While we do not want to propose that working out the virology will by necessity be easy on all counts, it may lead us all to more equitable immunological, pathological, and cell biological approaches to this formidable problem. A fine beginning has been made by Fisher et al. (10), Saag et al. (11), and others. To retrovirologists the problems appear not to be insurmountable.