Emerging viral infections

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of several significant viral pa thogens and the further evolution of additional viral pathogens. Transmitte d by a variety of differing routes, these organisms have presented substant ial intellectual challenges to medicine of the 20th and 21st centuries. As perhaps the benchmark pathogen of the past decade, HIV has provided medicin e and society with a most formidable opponent, and one that has yet to be f ully conquered. Nonetheless, a variety of additional viral pathogens have a lso perplexed medicine over the past 10-15 years. Curr Opin Infect Dis 14:4 67-480, (C) 2001 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.