The scientific challenge of hepatitis C.

Nobody would have mistaken the international conference on hepatitis C, held last month at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for an international conference on AIDS. For the past decade, international AIDS meetings have attracted roughly 10,000 researchers; only 775 scientists attended the 4-day hepatitis C meeting.* While drug companies working on anti-HIV drugs jam the exhibit halls at AIDS gatherings, not a single company set up a stand at the hepatitis C meeting. If activists infected with hepatitis C virus, or HCV, attended the gathering, none made their presence felt. Not a single press conference was held, reflecting the low media turnout (one). Yet HCV has infected an estimated 170 million people worldwide--more than four times as many as HIV--and, during the next few years, the number of annual U.S. deaths from HCV-caused liver damage and cancer may overtake deaths caused by AIDS.