TIME medical correspondent Christine Gorman has heard this too many times before. "In the history of AIDS, lead after lead has been built up as the next cure," she says, "and it hasn't panned out. For instance, wouldn't it stand to reason that if this were true, pregnant women wouldn't come down with AIDS? And that's not the case."
The finding has potential, but so do many other developments -- not least an Italian study, announced today and mostly ignored, of hemophiliacs who resisted HIV infection because of high levels of immune system proteins. "That's at least as promising," says Gorman. "Why doesn't it get any coverage? It's really irresponsible."