ABSTRACT
Introduction In the early years of our experience with HIV disease, conventional (orthodox) medical treatments focused on preventing and managing predictable opportunistic infections and cancers resulting from a progressive decline in immune system function due to the effects of unrelenting HIV replication. Then, within just a few short years of the advent of national epidemics of HIV infection and AIDS, a variety of antiretroviral drugs aimed at halting, or at least slowing, viral replication were developed and rapidly introduced into clinical practice in the industrially developed world. For most people, these new drugs allowed the damaged immune system a chance to partially recover and protect against further opportunistic events. However, these drugs were also associated with an impressive range of serious toxicities and were intolerable to some.
