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Based on what is known so far, two theories have emerged. One is that AIDS is caused by a specific agent, most probably a virus. "The infectious-agent hypothesis is much stronger than it was months ago," says Curran, reflecting the prevailing opinion at CDC. NIH Researcher Fauci, who staunchly believes that the culprit is a virus, has been collecting helper T-cells from AIDS victims to look for bits of viruses within their genetic codes. So far, however, this and other complex methods of detecting viruses have yielded nothing conclusive. Suspicion focuses on two viruses: one is a member...
...over it at night. By the time he returned to the U.S. in 1973, he had decided to become a doctor. In a year of dedicated slogging, he took the necessary preliminary courses and then graduated from Columbia University's medical school. He was determined to join the CDC, much to the amusement and disdain of more success-oriented classmates. "I was called a Goody Two-Shoes," he remembers...
Holmberg became an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in July 1982. His salary: $38,000. "There is no place in the world to study epidemiology like the CDC," he says. "You can go as far as your curiosity will take...
That can be pretty far. A month after joining the CDC, Holmberg was on the Pacific island of Truk fighting an outbreak of cholera. For two months he was virtually isolated from his superiors, talking weekly on a short-wave radio to a CDC doctor in Hawaii to report progress and get advice. He and the health officials on Truk discovered that cholera, previously thought to be transmitted only in water, apparently was also being spread by infected people handling food in the victims' homes. Says Holmberg: "Knowing it is a food-borne disease may make quite a difference...
Last February the CDC sent Holmberg to Minnesota to help local authorities cope with an outbreak of intestinal disease caused by Salmonella newport. Groping for a lead, Holmberg visited several of the victims in their homes. "I stuck my head in their refrigerators. I asked things you would never ask your friends, as nicely as possible, about diarrhea, bowel habits, food preparation, how often they washed their hands, drug use." Working with local health authorities, Holmberg eventually traced the probable cause of the disease to a herd of cows in a muddy field in South Dakota...