In the highly acclaimed 1991 play Angels in America , which explores AIDS in the United States in the 1980s, one of the characters muses about the nature of knowledge and novelty: “Imagination can’t create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions.” Although the scene’s intent is to ponder the limits of human experience and how the constraints of day-to-day reality are inescapable, the description of imagination aptly describes the creative shuffling that can lead to breakthroughs, like the ones recognized by Science at this time every year. In naming the drug lenacapavir as the 2024 Breakthrough of the Year, Science acknowledges the next, but by no means final, step in the drive to fight HIV/AIDS, where the rigors of the laboratory and the needs of humanity are inseparable.

中文翻译：

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 伟大的工作仍在继续


在 1991 年广受好评的戏剧《美国天使》中，探讨了 1980 年代美国的艾滋病问题，其中一个角色沉思着知识和新奇的本质：“想象力不能创造任何新的东西，不是吗？它只回收世界上的零碎碎片，并将它们重新组合成愿景。尽管该场景的目的是思考人类经验的局限性以及日常现实的限制如何不可避免，但对想象力的描述恰如其分地描述了可能导致突破的创造性洗牌，就像每年这个时候科学所承认的那样。通过将药物 lenacapavir 命名为 2024 年度突破，《科学》承认了抗击 HIV/AIDS 的下一个步骤，但绝不是最后一步，其中实验室的严酷性和人类的需求是不可分割的。