Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is a virologist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2008 for the co-discovery, with Professor Luc Montagnier, of the HIV virus. She is the president of the International AIDS Society.
Hélène Cardin is a journalist and radio broadcaster specialising in health issues, and the author of several books.
Danièle Messager is a journalist and radio broadcaster specialising in health issues.

Since 1981, AIDS has forced France to evolve and reform in numerous areas: science, which has made enormous progress; medicine, with its increasingly effective treatments that have transformed a deadly disease into a chronic illness; politics; social programmes; institutions; associations.
What scientific, medical and political lessons can be drawn for the future? The reforms have been so far-reaching that nothing will ever be the way it was thirty years ago. But has the battle been definitively won, in France and worldwide? Even if the virus has been weakened it is still among us.
This book aims to remind us of the need for vigilance, research and progress.

• An overview of the history of AIDS.
• An original viewpoint: the author argues that AIDS has had a positive impact by forcing society to evolve over the past thirty years.
• AIDS and the issues it has brought to light, recounted from various different points of view by the principle actors.