Striking a Better Bargain with HIV

During roughly every minute you spend reading this article, a mother somewhere in the world will pass on to her infant HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Damming this current of HIV transmission would be rather simple from a medical standpoint. But it requires either a daunting financial cost or a Faustian biological bargain in which a mother acting in her infant’s best interests may reduce her own later chances of avoiding full-blown AIDS.