It was June 5th 1981 that the world was suddenly awakened to the reality of a new disease that would become one of the most destructive diseases in human history.

AIDS or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is a widespread disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus. The disease makes people with AIDS more susceptible to infections which get worse as the disease continues. Since the disease was first recognized in 1981 there have been 25 million deaths because of the disease. As of 2009 there are 33 million people estimated living with HIV/AIDS. In Australia there is an estimated 20,171 people living with HIV at the end of 2009. There are a recorded 6,776 AIDS death in Australia.

Although a 2011 UNAIDS report shows that HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths have fallen since the peak of the epidemic there is still no cure for the disease. In its 30-year history doctors, researchers and scientists have been unrelenting in their quest for an AIDS cure. Yet despite medical miracles such as finding an effective anti-HIV drug cocktail that represses HIV, there is still no cure in sight. Although the antiviral drugs have given HIV positive patients a second chance at life it is still expensive and they don't eliminate the disease from the patient. It seemed like the quest for an HIV vaccine or cure was at a dead end until recent news spurred the fight again.

An American patient residing in Berlin named Timothy Brown received two bone marrow transplants from a donor that was naturally resistant to HIV infection. With resistant cells that fought off his infection, Brown has been free of the virus for about four years now.

News of Brown's miraculous recovery was received with little fanfare from the scientific community. Brown's case was considered a one-time offer. Bone marrow transplants are expensive and risky to the patient. More importantly it's impossible to cure every AIDS patient with this method because there aren't that many immune donors that can match a patient.

Gene therapy may not be the only path towards a cure. Other researchers are looking at drugs that can eradicate the disease from the body. Researchers are looking to resurrect the body's T-cells that can help fight off the virus, One candidate is the drug called vorinostat which reverses a mechanism that cells use to silence genes. However this treatment isn't the final solution to the AIDS epidemic. Vorinostat might cause serious side effects if it activates other genes that are supposed to remain silenced.

No matter what path scientists take to find a cure for AIDS the end result would still rid the world and humankind of a virus that has claimed millions of lives.