The Inexplicable Survivors of a Widespread Epidemic:
It has been 16 years since Mr. Brothers learned he was H.I.V. positive. Since then, he has never taken AIDS drugs or had any illnesses associated with the disease. Despite his good fortune, Mr. Brothers says he feels isolated.
“I don’t identify with people who are H.I.V. negative because I’m not,” he said. “I could infect someone. I don’t identify with the positive people, because I don’t have to deal with my health and medications and the things they have to worry about.”
Once a month Mr. Brothers visits the laboratory of Dr. Jay Levy, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who is director of the university’s laboratory for tumor and AIDS virus research. Since the epidemic began in 1981, Dr. Levy has been trying to understand why Mr. Brothers and others who are H.I.V. positive can remain medicine-free yet fit for decades, while the average person with H.I.V. progresses to AIDS within 10 years, if untreated.
Always the fear-addict, i’m a big fan of PBS’ “Secrets of The Dead”, especially an episode dealing with the connection between acquired immunity to the Black Death and HIV: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_plague/interview.html
If you havn’t already seen it, check it out via bittorrent or reruns. It’s excellent.