Includes bibliographical references (pages [480]-495) and index.

A veteran journalist dramatizes the controversial search for an AIDS vaccine-the players, the politics, the money-in a vivid, suspenseful story that reveals how science is done and not done, in America today. A journalist who has written widely about medical research, Thomas recounts how the search for an AIDS vaccine has taken a back seat to the search by major pharmaceutical companies for expensive drugs to kill the virus. She found social attitudes towards the disease, careerism and timidity among bureaucrats, and corporate anxieties about profits and liability to be primary roadblocks to research.

"When Patricia Thomas set out to chronicle the search for an AIDS vaccine, she expected to find a classic struggle between ingenious young scientists and an exceptionally wily microbe. But she was in for a surprise. She soon learned that although the scientific challenges involved in making an AIDS vaccine are immense, this alone does not explain why the world still doesn't have such a vaccine - twenty years after the pandemic began. In Big Shot, Thomas dramatizes the controversial search for a vaccine - the players, the politics, the money - in a vivid, suspenseful story that reveals how science is done, and not done, in America today."--BOOK JACKET.

1300,Lexile.