The New York Times looks at the evolution of the battle against AIDS since the first federal announcement of the disease 30 years ago this week. “The epidemic has brought a new focus on the power of epidemiology to identify a disease’s transmission patterns long before discovery of its cause. … Yet AIDS still presents extraordinary challenges – not least to journalists trying to chronicle the epidemic’s unfolding story, to remind a new generation of the importance of safe sex, and to follow the sometimes halting effort to make effective drugs available to all who need them” (Altman, 5/30).