The later-this-month meeting of over 20,000 international HIV researchers and activists in Washington underscores a new optimism about the possibility of dramatically stemming the spread of AIDS virus; and of ultimately achieving the goal of forming an AIDS-free generation!

The forthcoming International AIDS Conference – which will mark a return to the US for the first time in 22 years - already has the undercurrent of a sense of optimism which has not been seen in the last several years.

An Associated Press report quoted Dr. Anthony Fauci – the infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health – as saying that though the experts want to ensure that they “don't overpromise,” they definitely felt that they were “at a turning point” with regard to stemming the spread of AIDS.

With the big new focus in the direction of stemming AIDS being the ongoing attempts to get more HIV-infected people treated early, Fauci said that the last couple of years had shown “striking, sometimes breathtaking results" in preventing the spread of the disease in the ‘high risk’ people of some of the hardest-hit countries. Fauci said that this was essentially a result of treatment-as-prevention and some other protections.

As such, the spotlight at the forthcoming conference will be on the possibility of the world coming together with financial resources and expertise to put the best combinations of AIDS protections into practice --- not only for AIDS-wrecked poor countries, but also for hot spots in developed countries!