It is difficult to put your finger on why, almost exactly three decades after the first case of AIDS was reported, there is now a general feeling in the scientific community that big breakthroughs are coming soon in AIDS vaccines, treatments and prevention. It is not only that big financiers like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are contributing millions to the eradication of HIV (although that certainly helps). It's that the 30 years spent on understanding the virus that causes AIDS is at last making sense in a coherent way. Read the report