Family mirrors nation's HIV struggle.

Byline: Jeremy Manier

CHICAGO _ In a maternity ward room filled with relatives, Carmen Chinea fussed over her 20-year-old daughter's intravenous lines and helped her prepare for a baby they all awaited with a mix of hope and fear. Two decades earlier, Chinea had unknowingly passed HIV to her daughter during childbirth. The disease sapped Chinea's health and stole her daughter's innocence, leaving the young woman with deep emotional wounds. Now the new baby risked contracting the virus in the same way. AIDS was stalking a third generation _ from mother, to daughter, to grandchild.

But this time there was reason for hope. If doctors could devise the right strategy, the drugs that saved the lives of Chinea and her daughter also might save the infant from infection.

On that day in September of last year, painkillers and the anti-viral drug AZT dripped into the pregnant young woman's forearm, near a faint grid of scars where she had cut herself as a despairing teenager.

If the anti-HIV therapy worked, the newborn could be free of the virus, breaking one family's sorrowful chain of disease. A healthy baby was the best hope for Chinea's daughter to move beyond the misery she'd felt since learning she had HIV. For Chinea, too, the child could help redeem decades of struggle.

"We've come this far. We can go farther," said Chinea, a 44-year-old with a muscular build and a long, black ponytail.

Chinea's family has reflected the story of AIDS in America through three generations, beginning soon after acquired immune deficiency syndrome was first identified 25 years ago. Revolutionary anti-HIV treatments have brought hope and a kind of accommodation with the deadly virus. But AIDS is not conquered, and it continues to take a human toll.

The doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital knew they might not succeed in protecting the newborn from HIV. Chinea's daughter, who asked that her name be withheld for privacy reasons, had taken anti-viral medications for most of her life. The virus that survived was especially hardy and could pose a special threat to her infant.

The baby wasn't the only worry. Even as Chinea held her daughter's hand, her thoughts were with her 12-year-old son, Chuckie, also infected from birth, who lay dying from AIDS-related kidney failure in an intensive-care unit across town. For a family trying to shed its legacy of disease, Chuckie's downward spiral was a harsh reminder that the virus could kill.

In the maternity room, Dr. Patricia Garcia was a calming presence. Her obstetrics group at Northwestern boasted a nine-year streak without delivering an HIV-positive baby, thanks to new treatments and single-minded persistence. But she had recently treated two other pregnant women like Chinea's daughter, infected since childhood. They posed an unpredictable challenge.

Garcia explained what the family could expect during the baby's Caesarean-section delivery and in the following weeks. The infant would need months of drug therapy and HIV testing. They could not know if the baby was free of infection until January _ four months away.

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Then Garcia paused. Chinea…