Have we even made any advancements in trying to cure AIDS or cancer?

it seems like billions has been poured into the search...with little to no results. Maybe I'm wrong...

There isn't a cure, and there may never be. Some cancers have really good therapies (ie testicular cancer, childhood leukemia). Some really don't, ie pancreatic, glioblastoma. Some cancers still kill within 1-2 years, and this hasn't changed in decades. But many are more treatable now. AIDS has alot of drugs for treatment, but it's actually hard to prevent people from getting AIDS (vaccines difficulties) or to root out HIV (antiviral difficulties). All we can do really is keep it from spreading. Maybe in a few more decades we can do this. Cancer will always be a problem because you won't know you have it until it's too late, since most people don't do checkups for every type of cancer out there every year. Maybe in the future we'll have a blood test that can tell if you have any type (or 99% of them) of cancer. ALot of work is going into that, including some that our lab is doing. But believe me there is no vast consipracy; but you can make the arguement that potentially life saving drugs are not on the market because the regulatory hurdles are too high or they won't make a profit. Drugs cost billions to get FDA approved, and unless they are going to benefit alot of people pharma companies aren't going to bother with them. That's economics, it's not a conspiracy. If we didn't have such huge requirements then there would be alot more drugs available, and alot more people will die from them.

The problem is that there is no money in a cure. These large pharmaceutical companies would rather continue developing medications instead of developing a cure. Same with cancer, and all other diseases. It's truly sad!

my husband works in cancer research....research is slow and panful and very very very frustrating - they are making progress every day

yes were making progress but its a complicated disease

First off there are now effective treatments to slow the disease's spread. These treatments are now available in all countries to a limited degree. A vaccine has been tried but with no success to date. New trials are scheduled on humans. There's lots of reasons for hope.

Of course progress has been made. The cancer mortality rate is now below 30% universally, and the AIDS epidemic (at least here in America) has stabilized. Furthermore, most folks with AIDS can continue along with their full lives based upon drug treatments available which stave off the disease and boost the immune system. The former answer is somehwat correct as well though of course we'd like to believe in a conspiracy, drug manufacturers are not tasked with curing the disease. The government and independent researchers pour tax dollars into developing cures. For profit corporations do not use shareholder value for altruism. It is not a charity.

Advancements has been made.

AIDS and cancer is hard to cure because they are involved in genetic materail. Cancer cells and HIV virus are capable of mutation. So we are curently cannot find a drug to get rid of them. But progress has been made every passing day. There are 1 or 2 new drugs to treat HIV every year. And I believe that one day, there will be a cure for these diseases.

Here's why we'll never find a cure for AIDS.

HIV is a virus, and we currently have no way to get rid of viruses in our body. Antibotics can kill bacteria in our body, but there is no equivilant for viruses. This is becauses viruses are not living, so they do not need to let any nutrients into their core to survive. This makes it nearly impossible to penetrate a virus's outter membrane to kill it. Your immune system is the only way to get rid of viruses currently. (This is why there is no cure for the common cold virus, either). Certain liquids can destroy virus particles, but they are toxic to humans, too.

What we can do, however, is find a vaccine for HIV, like the flu virus vaccine. If you have AIDS or HIV now, however, there is little hope for ever finding a cure for you, although new medical advances are helping keep you alive for much longer.

Many forms of cancer are now considered "manageable" diseases because of the progress that has been made. The secret with cancer is screening, catching it early enough (while still localized), and being decisive with treatment at that point.

AIDS has also become way more manageable than it was just twenty years ago, but there are still major hurdles to overcome in stopping its spread. Just telling people not to have sex is going to work every bit as well as it has in the past.