Statistical challenges of AIDS
Becker, N.G.
Australian Journal of Statistics 34(2): 129-144
1992
ISSN/ISBN: 0004-9581 PMID: 12285674 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-842x.1992.tb01348.xDocument Number: 321146
"This paper considers questions concerning the incubation period [of HIV infections], the effects of treatments, prediction of AIDS cases, the choice of surrogate end points for the assessment of treatments and design of strategies for screening blood samples. These issues give rise to a broad range of intriguing problems for statisticians. We describe some of these problems, how they have been tackled so far and what remains to be done. The discussion touches on topical statistical methods such as smoothing, bootstrapping, interval censoring and the ill-posed inverse problem, as well as asking fundamental questions for frequentist statistics." The geographical scope is worldwide, with some data for selected developed countries used to illustrate the models.