Are you saying that antibiotics were a failure? While anti-retroviral therapy for HIV/AID does not cure the disease, it has transformed a diagnosis that would

Are you saying that antibiotics were a failure? While anti-retroviral therapy for HIV/AID does not cure the disease, it has transformed a diagnosis that would otherwise have been a death sentence into a manageable illness. If a "first order" treatment for cancer only extends lives by a few years or even decades, how is that not progress?