[Physician-patient relationship in human immunodeficiency virus infection]

Since the middle of this century--with, among other, the discoveries of penicillin and of streptomycin--doctors have tended to consider themselves as powerfully armed against transmissible diseases that caused so many premature deaths. The surge of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has bluntly faced us with a situation we have not been prepared for, but that was the daily duty of our predecessors: to care for an epidemic disease, yet without the ability to cure it; to treat infection until it provokes death unavoidably. In the face of this renewed challenge we must reconstruct forgotten relationships that we have not learnt, and that we must adapt to the circumstances of our time and to the peculiar modes of HIV transmission. This daily facet of HIV infection is not the least. It is presented here through the testimonies of a general practitioner and a psychiatrist, with the hope that any doctor will find them thoughtful and helpful.