All the generic virus drugs we had have been eliminted : pretty much all existing viruses are eliminated and we have lost the ability to heal, for example, heal elderly or children infected with the flue (the groups at risk of dying from the disease).
We do not have any drug against any retrovirus (ie. a family of viruses) to which viruses do not show at least partial resistance.
As for the AIDS case, prevention of AIDS has pretty much failed in Africa and the middle east, as well as in significant parts of Asia. It is a matter of a decade or so until ~80% of those populations are HIV positive and the rest of the world will follow in the next few decades. All currently know anti-AIDS drugs will cease being effective in 5 years or less, and the rate of adaptation that the virus exhibits is still accelerating (we wouldn't be able to keep up with the current rate, so sadly, that doesn't even matter).
This is of course assuming we don't have another pandemic like the Spanish flue. We have had several near-pandemic panics in the past decade and all incidents have one thing in common : we failed spectacularly at containment. If, for example, bird flue had been ~6% more infectious than it was, it would have killed ~20% of the world's population (at least), and would have reaped >90% of it's death toll before a vaccine would become available. Absolutely nothing would have stopped it. Bird flue itself was only one of 5 incidents that could have exploded into a pandemic. The big message of these incidents: yes, they stopped, hurray. Sadly it wasn't us who stopped it (but rather small flaws in the virus' design).
There is a staggering amount wrong with this statement. Staggering.
- The prevention of HIV in developing countries is hampered not by the ineffectiveness of drugs, but the expense and difficulty administering them. HIV in the developed world is, in many cases, now essentially a chronic disease. Indeed, it is the use of HAART drugs to prevent transmission in discordant couples that is providing a glimmer of hope for reducing the burden of HIV without a vaccine.
- While serious, prevalence of HIV is nowhere near 80%. Also, increasing prevalence is a function of disease duration, so better treatments will, mathematically, cause prevalence to rise.
- I'd contest rather strongly that we failed spectacularly at containment for several recent outbreaks.
- Antiviral drugs are not our only means of fighting viruses. If "Anti-X drugs" were the solution, we'd have eliminated many bacterial diseases - we haven't. The key to fighting viruses is vaccination, and we've wiped two viruses off the face of the earth, and are largely facing political/social problems, rather than scientific ones, with adding two more to that tally.
