The Year in Medicine (2005)
TIME.com Print Page: TIME Magazine -- The Year in Medicine: "Sunday, Nov. 27, 2005
The Year in Medicine
By SORA SONG, ALICE PARK, COCO MASTERS
-- A --
ACUPUNCTURE There is growing scientific evidence that acupuncture, a pillar of Chinese medicine, can relieve many kinds of pain, but there's no clear agreement about how it works. That was underscored by a German study of migraines: it found that inserting needles at various acupuncture points in the body relieved pain just as effectively as inserting them in the points that are supposed to affect migraines. Both therapies cut the number of episodes more than 50% over a 12-week period; a control group that did not receive either treatment continued to suffer as before.
AIDS This was the year that the World Health Organization (WHO), under the banner of its innovative '3 by 5' campaign, was supposed to put 3 million AIDS patients in the developing world on life-saving antiretroviral drugs. With only a month left in 2005, the WHO is expected to fall short of its goal, but most experts still consider the plan a success. Fourteen of the countries hardest hit by the epidemic now provide therapies to at least half their patients who need them. Such aggressive treatment programs are critical as the AIDS virus continues to spread and mutate. The WHO and U.N. last week reported that an estimated 40 million people are HIV-positive, including a record 1 million in the U.S. In New York City, doctors were alarmed to discover a particularly powerful strain of HIV in a sexually active gay man. Resistant to all but one of the classes of anti-AIDS drugs, that fast-working virus appears to lead to full-blown AIDS in a matter of months. "/.../
The Year in Medicine
By SORA SONG, ALICE PARK, COCO MASTERS
-- A --
ACUPUNCTURE There is growing scientific evidence that acupuncture, a pillar of Chinese medicine, can relieve many kinds of pain, but there's no clear agreement about how it works. That was underscored by a German study of migraines: it found that inserting needles at various acupuncture points in the body relieved pain just as effectively as inserting them in the points that are supposed to affect migraines. Both therapies cut the number of episodes more than 50% over a 12-week period; a control group that did not receive either treatment continued to suffer as before.
AIDS This was the year that the World Health Organization (WHO), under the banner of its innovative '3 by 5' campaign, was supposed to put 3 million AIDS patients in the developing world on life-saving antiretroviral drugs. With only a month left in 2005, the WHO is expected to fall short of its goal, but most experts still consider the plan a success. Fourteen of the countries hardest hit by the epidemic now provide therapies to at least half their patients who need them. Such aggressive treatment programs are critical as the AIDS virus continues to spread and mutate. The WHO and U.N. last week reported that an estimated 40 million people are HIV-positive, including a record 1 million in the U.S. In New York City, doctors were alarmed to discover a particularly powerful strain of HIV in a sexually active gay man. Resistant to all but one of the classes of anti-AIDS drugs, that fast-working virus appears to lead to full-blown AIDS in a matter of months. "/.../
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