Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 15:10:51 +0500 From: "Martha Vander Kolk" Subject: CDC AIDS Daily Summary 10/25/95 AIDS Daily Summary October 25, 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 ************************************************************ "Company Sued for Firing HIV-Infected Driver" "Nationline: AIDS Bias Ruling" "The Deadly Politics of AIDS" "Sixty Percent of China HIV Carriers Under 30" "Somatogen Optimistic in Race to Develop Blood Substitute" "Counseling Women in Assertiveness" "Program Development Board Slates Forum on AIDS-Related Activities" "AIDS Researcher Says He Was Told to Ignore Safety Measures" "Multidrug-Resistant TB in UK" ************************************************************ "Company Sued for Firing HIV-Infected Driver" Journal of Commerce (10/25/95) P. 3B A California-based trucking firm is being sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for allegedly incorrectly firing an HIV-infected driver. DEF Express has been charged with violating the Americans with Disabilities Act in its dismissal of driver James Marion. "Nationline: AIDS Bias Ruling" USA Today (10/25/95) P. 3A; Leavitt, Paul; Rivera, Patricia V. Dentists acted correctly in wearing protective clothing and covering up equipment when treating HIV-infected patients five and 10 years ago, New York's highest court has ruled. In separate cases, the Court of Appeals overturned decisions of the state Division of Human Rights, which had found discrimination and awarded monetary compensation to the patients. "The Deadly Politics of AIDS" Wall Street Journal (10/25/95) P. A14; Smith, Helen Mathews American public health officials have longed ignored the key principles involved in plague control-- including routine testing, disease tracking, and warnings to groups at risk, writes Helen Mathews Smith in the Wall Street Journal. Smith, who is writing a book on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, notes that in 1987, the medical establishment chose individual rights over public health when examining the future role of HIV testing. Soon after, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that high-risk groups be "encouraged" to be tested for HIV, though it warned that persons should not be tested unless they had received "appropriate counseling" and given consent. Still, voluntary testing then created its own problems, offering information about the epidemic's past but not its future. Over the years, some progress has been made. For example, the CDC now recommends that "all" pregnant women be tested for HIV, not just those at high risk. The agency, however, has yet to deal with the question of whether the United States can continue to rely upon voluntary testing to bring the AIDS epidemic under control, Smith writes. No one knows if routine or mandatory HIV testing would end the epidemic, but at the very least, Smith concludes, thousands of lives would be preserved. "Sixty Percent of China HIV Carriers Under 30" Reuters (10/25/95) China's Health Daily reports that 60 percent of the HIV-infected individuals in China are less than 30 years old. The newspaper quoted one health official as saying that China has diagnosed 1,774 people with HIV, of whom 60 percent are between the ages of 16 and 29. Experts, however, claim that inadequate reporting and misdiagnosis could bring the actual total of HIV-infected Chinese to more than 10,000. Meanwhile, the State Education Commission has started offering sex education and AIDS information to approximately 19 million sixth-grade elementary school students, nearly 59 million high-school students, and almost 3 million college students. "Somatogen Optimistic in Race to Develop Blood Substitute" Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News (10/25/95); Algeo, David Somatogen Inc. is likely within four or five years of applying for final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its genetically engineered human blood substitute, company CEO and president Andre de Bruin said at the firm's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday. De Bruin added that Eli Lilly and Co., which has put millions of dollars into Somatogen's research, is renovating a European plant where it will produce the product, known as Optro, in commercial volumes. In recent tests, medical teams used Optro instead of donated blood for transfusions and avoided exposing patients to such blood-borne diseases as AIDS or hepatitis, de Bruin added. The next stage of testing is expected to be completed in 1997, after which time the final stage should soon commence. "Counseling Women in Assertiveness" Reuters (10/24/95) Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham announced Tuesday that disadvantaged women who are at high risk for contracting HIV are significantly more likely to consistently use condoms if exposed to a in-depth sexual counseling program. The researchers said that their study showed that women between the ages of 18 and 29 reacted most positively to peer health educators who discussed sexual situations and offered assertiveness counseling. "The social-skills intervention addressed how to successfully negotiate safer sex...within the context of a heterosexual relationship where women are often in unequal positions of power relative to men," explained study author Ralph DiClemente in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Program Development Board Slates Forum on AIDS-Related Activities" Nation's Health (10/95) Vol. 25, No. 9, P. 15 The Program Development Board of the American Public Health Association (APHA) will sponsor an open forum on the association's AIDS-related functions at the APHA annual meeting in San Diego. The forum will offer such information as the APHA's past and present initiatives and the appropriate focus and nature of AIDS activities in the future. Organizers hope to obtain information to direct the current program and to identify new requirements. "AIDS Researcher Says He Was Told to Ignore Safety Measures" American Medical News (10/16/95) Vol. 38, No. 39, P. 19 Joseph Yourno, an AIDS Researcher, has filed suit in Albany, N.Y., claiming that New York state health department officials tried to ruin his career after he complained about the lack of basic safety procedures at a state laboratory. "Despite the fact that my research was in AIDS, my supervisors criticized my adherence to strict safety standards and voiced their desire for me to sacrifice safety for the purpose of advancing my research at a faster pace," said Yourno. Yourno's suit includes internal department memos that mentioned concern over tubes of blood dropped in the stairwells and hazardous waste thrown away in regular trash cans. He also described how a large bird flew through an open window in 1991 and knocked equipment around before flying away, raising concerns that it might spread infection. Yourno, a 16-year health department veteran earned $107,797 a year, holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology, studied with AIDS researcher Robert Gallo at the National Institutes of Health, and had patented a new blood spot technique. After lodging complaints on the lab conditions, he was allegedly demoted to a desk job reviewing credential applications for laboratory scientists. Sheila Galvin, Yourno's attorney, said that her client only filed the suit after it became clear the matter could not be resolved internally and that he hopes the publicity will force the department to clean up its procedures. "Multidrug-Resistant TB in UK" Nature Medicine (10/95) Vol. 1, No. 10, P. 985; Kingman, Sharon The first incident of hospital-acquired multidrug-resistant tuberculosis occurred in the United Kingdom. Five HIV-positive patients at the Chelsea and Westminister Hospital in London contracted the illness from sharing a room with a patient who died in June. One of the patients has died of AIDS, but the other four are being treated for tuberculosis and are expected to do well. The strain of tuberculosis isolated from the patients was resistant to rifamoin, rifabutin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide, clofazamine, and ethionamide, but proved sensitive to six alternate antibiotics.