Portside

Medicine may be on the brink of an enormous public health achievement: turning the tide against hepatitis C, a silent plague that kills more Americans annually than AIDS and is the leading cause of liver transplants. If the effort succeeds, it will be an unusual conquest of a viral epidemic without using a vaccine. But the new drugs are expected to cost from $60,000 to more than $100,000 for a course of treatment. Access could be a problem, particularly for uninsured.