This issue takes a look — a thorough look — at the biomedical prevention of HIV/AIDS.

Newsweek interviews Dr. John Bartlett, chief of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins and co-chair of the national HIV treatment guidelines panel. Among other things, Dr. Bartlett warns that while the search for an HIV vaccine must continue, we should brace for the possibility that we’ll never have one.

The Center for AIDS will be closed from Monday, Dec. 24, 2007 until Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2008.

From all of us to all of you, happy holidays!

The new guidelines, released Dec. 1, are available in pdf.

University of California at San Francisco:

“New data from six U.S. sites show a dramatic shift by men acutely infected with HIV to choose to have unprotected intercourse only with other HIV-infected partners.”

Washington Post:

“The first statistics ever amassed on HIV in the District, released today in a sweeping report, reveal ‘a modern epidemic‘ remarkable for its size, complexity and reach into all parts of the city.”

Washington Blade:

“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention is mulling over when to release alarming new statistics showing that as many as 50 percent more people are being infected with HIV each year in the United States than originally reported by the government.

According to AIDS advocacy groups familiar with the CDC, middle level officials at the disease prevention agency have quietly confided in colleagues in professional and scientific circles that the number of new HIV infections now appears to be as high as 58,000 to 63,000 cases in the most recent 12-month period.”

ABC News:

“More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year, the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease, federal health officials said Tuesday.”

Chicago Tribune:

“Four transplant recipients in Chicago contracted HIV from a high-risk organ donor whose infection went undetected in what hospital officials say is the first documented case of the virus being transmitted by organ donation in the U.S. in more than 20 years.”

New York Times: “In a puzzling and potentially troubling development, an AIDS vaccine tested in a closely watched trial might have increased the risk among vaccine recipients of becoming infected with H.I.V., researchers reported yesterday at a scientific meeting in Seattle.” (Link requires registration.)