7.29 AIDS clinical trials. Now that effective treatments for AIDS are at last available, is it ethical to test treatments that may be less effective? Combinations of several powerful drugs reduce the level of HIV in the blood and at least delay illness and death from AIDS. But effectiveness depends on how damaged the patient’s immune system is and what drugs he or she has previously taken. There are strong side effects, and patients must be able to take more than a dozen pills on time every day. Because AIDS is often fatal and the combination therapy works, we might argue that it isn’t ethical to test any new treatment for AIDS that might possibly be less effective. But that might prevent discovery of better treatments. This is a strong example of the conflict between doing the best we know for patients now and finding better treatments for other patients in the future. How can we ethically test new drugs for AIDS?