Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 09:49:46 +0500 From: ghmcleaf{CONTRACTOR/ASPEN/ghmcleaf}%NAC-GATEWAY.ASPEN@ace.aspensys.com Subject: CDC AIDS Daily Summary 10/17/95 AIDS Daily Summary October 17, 1995 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National AIDS Clearinghouse makes available the following information as a public service only. Providing this information does not constitute endorsement by the CDC, the CDC Clearinghouse, or any other organization. Reproduction of this text is encouraged; however, copies may not be sold, and the CDC Clearinghouse should be cited as the source of this information. Copyright 1995, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD ************************************************************ "Deaths: Frank Lilly--Geneticist" "AIDS Rate Low in Cuba, at High Price" "Across the USA: California, Maine" "Cel-Sci Will Take Over Joint Venture With Alpha 1" "The Search for an AIDS Vaccine" "Not Our Job" "Differences in HIV Strains May Underlie Disease Patterns" ************************************************************ "Deaths: Frank Lilly--Geneticist" Washington Post (10/17/95) P. D4 Frank Lilly, one of the first openly homosexual presidential appointees, died of prostate cancer on Saturday. Lilly is credited with describing the effect of hereditary factors in susceptibility to cancer-causing agents during his tenure as geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In 1987, he was appointed by President Reagan to a panel studying AIDS. "AIDS Rate Low in Cuba, at High Price" Miami Herald (10/16/95) P. 7A; Golden, Tim Figures from the World Health Organization indicate that there are only 0.8 reported cases of AIDS per 100,000 people in Cuba, one of the lowest rates for the disease in Latin America and the Caribbean. These statistics can be attributed to Cuba's policy of quarantining individuals infected with HIV. "People are beginning to see that what we did works," contends Reinaldo G. Gil, the epidemiologist in charge of the Health Ministry's AIDS programs. Raidel Burgos, an AIDS patient who was forced in a sanatorium, acknowledges that his isolation prevents others from becoming infected and that he receives better food and medicine than he would at home. However, "We have lost our freedom. That is the most important thing there is," he adds. "Across the USA: California, Maine" USA Today (10/17/95) P. 10A California Governor Pete Wilson has vetoed legislation that would have permitted AIDS and cancer patients to cultivate and smoke marijuana. In other news, a Maine state plan for prevention and patient care says that most recent AIDS diagnoses have come from rural areas. "Cel-Sci Will Take Over Joint Venture With Alpha 1" Washington Business Journal (09/29/95-10/05/95) Vol. 14, No. 20, P. 14 Cel-Sci Corp. intends to purchase Alpha 1 Biomedical's 50-percent stake in their joint venture by giving Alpha 159,170 shares valued at $750,000. The purchase will end a two-month dispute between the drug firms. Cel-Sci and Alpha created the venture, Viral Technologies Inc., in 1986 to collaborate on the development of an AIDS vaccine. Cel-Sci threatened litigation in July alleging that Alpha would not pay its share of the venture's annual budget. The AIDS vaccine is now in clinical trials. Alpha will work instead on thymosin beta 4, a potential treatment for cystic fibrosis and other respiratory diseases. "The Search for an AIDS Vaccine" Lancet (09/23/95) Vol. 346, No. 8978, P. 828; Beale, John Christine Grady's timely book, "Ethical Issues in the Development and Testing of a Preventive HIV Vaccine," focuses on the use of preventive vaccines in previously uninfected people. Grady does this because the therapeutic use of a vaccine raises similar ethical issues to those already understood in clinical trials of anti-AIDS drugs. A key problem in developing a treatment is selecting which criteria to use in evaluating candidate vaccines to determine whether they merit clinical trial. Although Grady does not specifically address this issue, she points out that a fairly low degree of protection may be useful clinically, but could involve more chimpanzees than is feasible for preliminary studies. Grady also stresses the need to involve the community in the vaccine trial decision-making process. This is necessary because the community as a whole is the one most affected by the reduction of the burden of disease and the opportunities for infection. "Not Our Job" Village Voice (09/12/95) Vol. 40, No. 37, P. 24; Schoofs, Mark Only the U.S. Army claims its goal is to develop an AIDS vaccine all the way from test tube to syringe, writes Mark Schoofs in the Village Voice. The Army's AIDS vaccine budget is a mere $21 million, compared to the $128 million spent by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). However, NIH provides only "basic" science which private companies are supposed to develop into actual products. Currently, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which receives about 66 percent of NIH's AIDS vaccine funds, is trying to work more effectively with industry and is debating manufacturing prototype vaccines. But these answers will not solve NIH's lethargic pace and problems with coordination, Schoofs argues. Most research at NIH is not assigned, but rather "investigator initiated," which means that scientists develop their own projects that peer committees approve. This system has allowed research to "drift," says Duke University's Dani Bolognesi, the chair of an NIH vaccine-review committee. John Killen, director of NIAID's division of AIDS, also notes that NIH has neglected a potentially effective vaccine strategy which uses whole-killed virus. The U.S. Army has taken up the slack in making a whole-killed-virus vaccine, Schoofs concludes, even though its AIDS research funds are in danger of being cut by as much as 75 percent. "Differences in HIV Strains May Underlie Disease Patterns" Science (10/06/95) Vol. 270, No. 5223, P. 30; Cohen, Jon At the Third International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, retrovirologist Max Essex of the Harvard School of Public Health presented data that may help explain why HIV is primarily transmitted through heterosexual intercourse in developing countries, while the virus is spread most often in the industrial world via anal intercourse and shared needles. Essex said the differences between the HIV strains in the two worlds could be the cause. He noted that 10 percent or fewer of HIV-1 infections are due to vaginal intercourse in the United States and Europe, but that the situation is completely opposite in Thailand. "That suggests that something is dramatically different," Essex said. In collaboration with teams from Mahidol University and Chiang Mai University, Essex and his colleagues at Harvard tested various virus subtypes on Langerhans' cells gathered from the vagina, cervix, breast, and penile foreskin. According to Essex, the research showed that HIV "subtype E"--the strain with which most Thai heterosexuals are infected--has "a clear propensity for better infection with those cells that line the female genital tract. However, "subtype B," the strain which dominates in Europe and the United States, had virtually no growth. This finding led Essex to suggest that there may be two separate HIV-1 epidemics--one in which subtype B predominates and that is spread by blood and homosexual sex, and a second involving the other HIV-1 subtypes and primarily vaginal sex. Although the proposal was received well by most, others had serious reservations. One researcher noted the overwhelming presence of subtype B in the Caribbean, Central America, and Brazil--regions which all have primarily heterosexual epidemics.