"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.