Despite a continuing stigma about AIDS in Iran, the nation’s health authorities are winning praise globally for their response to the disease and have been more open about the number of cases and the routes of transmission, an Iranian-born American scientist said at AAAS recently.

Navid Madani, a research scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, helped organize an international AIDS meeting in Tehran 22-25 October. Close to 300 people attended, including seven invited speakers from the United States, and there was some unexpectedly frank talk about the disease.