BarnesandNoble.com
From our editors:

When medical researcher Patricia Thomas began chronicling the quest for an AIDS vaccine, she thought that she would be pursuing a laboratory detective story, the tale of scientific ingenuity struggling to master the secrets of a devious little microbe. The element of scientific challenge was certainly there, but Thomas discovered an even more troubling hurdling: "Social attitudes towards AIDS, careerism, and timidity among bureaucrats, and corporate anxieties about profits and liability have all been roadblocks to vaccine research and development." As spunky and irreverent as its title, Big Shot is about one retrovirus that won't go away and the people determined to stamp it out.