100 Questions and Answers about HIV and AIDS
Years ago, when the Internet and I were both young and HIV infection was virtually untreatable, I began answering questions about HIV and AIDS on the Web, first informally on AOL, later in an online forum on The Body, the first website for HIV-positive people, and finally on the Hopkins AIDS Service website (now the Hopkins HIV Guide). In many thousands of archived responses over the years, I've not only answered questions about the complications and treatment of HIV infection, but also attempted to refute deranged arguments from wacko conspiracy theorists and defuse (or sometimes ridicule) the irrational, hypochondriacal fears of the so-called "worried well." I'd toyed with the idea of compiling these questions into a book, but before I could sell the idea, I was asked to write 100 Questions and Answers about HIV and AIDS, part of a series of disease-specific books for lay readers published by Jones and Bartlett. Keeping it to a 100 question limit wasn't easy, but I hope that the final product provides the information that someone infected or affected by HIV would need to know, written in non-technical language that still retains some of the irreverence and humor of the online forum.
Joel Gallant is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, and Professor of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is the Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins AIDS Service. He is also an investigator in the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN), the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), and the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). Gallant writes and speaks extensively on HIV infection and antiretroviral therapy, and he is co-author, with John G. Bartlett, of the Medical Management of HIV Infection, which is updated annually, and author of 100 Questions and Answers about HIV and AIDS, a book for lay readers.
