The hemophiliac was in his twenties, and he had HIV but no viral load, the term for how much of the virus coursed around inside a person. With HIV, the viral load typically took a fascinating path. Initially, it would spike so that there were a million copies of the virus in each milliliter of plasma. (One patient was studied whose load spiked to 5 million copies.) Huge numbers. Then, however, the viral load would typically fall sharply during a chronic phase of the illness and then spike again as death neared.
