I think the quote at the end of this piece is probably accurate. It undercuts the rest by saying that fears of a new, aggressive strain of HIV are “a storm in a teacup” [© Benjamin Mackie 2004]. But ten years ago I was sitting in a common room when one of the most senior professors of medicine in the UK predicted that such a thing would happen. I thought he was wrong, for what that’s worth (and his specialty isn’t infectious disease).