On the undesirable roster of illnesses, cancer and HIV are notably high-ranking. One Californian man named Paul Edmonds found himself afflicted with both. Miraculously, he's been free of both cancer and HIV ever since one particular treatment five years ago. Paul is currently deemed to be in remission from acute myelogenous leukaemia .
"People were dying within a few years of finding out they were positive," Edmonds said, describing his experiences in San Francisco in the 80s. "A dark cloud was over the city." While Paul had been on HIV antiretroviral therapy since 1997, which had effectively suppressed the virus to undetectable levels, the medication cannot cure the disease as the virus's DNA remains ever-present in the immune cells in one's blood.