From: Billi Goldberg <bigoldberg@igc.apc.org>
Subject: CDC Summary 11/10/92
Note: Copyright 1992, Dan R. Greening. Non-commercial reproduction allowed.
Archive-Number: 6438
Organization: unspecified
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 08:52:24 PST

                         AIDS Daily Summary
                          November 10, 1992 
 The Centers for Disease Control (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.  Copyright 1992, 
Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD 
************************************************************************
 "AIDS Case Benefit Cut Let Stand" Washington Post (11/10/92), P. A1  
(Biskupic, Joan)
     The Supreme Court yesterday upheld a ruling that permitted an  
employer to cut the insurance benefits of a man who developed  AIDS, a 
move that could have widespread impact both practically  and 
politically.  The high court declined from reviewing a  controversial 
federal appeals court ruling that said federal law  does not prevent 
certain employers from making sudden benefit  changes to save themselves 
money, regardless of whether  individual situations prompted the 
reductions.  The case involves H+H Music Co., which slashed the health 
benefits of employee John W. McGann from $1 million to $5,000 for 
lifetime treatment of  AIDS.  McGann died last year, while he was 
appealing a federal  district court opinion in favor of his employer.  
In denying  review of the case, the Supreme Court followed the advice of 
the  Bush administration, which last month said nothing in the federal 
pension law at issue prevented H+H Music from adopting an  insurance 
plan "that disadvantaged persons with AIDS for the  purpose of reducing 
plan costs."  Justice Department attorneys  said that the recently 
enacted Americans With Disabilities Act  might prohibit insurance-
benefit discrimination against AIDS  patients.   AIDS advocates and 
others in the medical community  expressed dismay at the court's 
decision, saying that the case  represents a loophole in the federal 
Employee Retirement Income  Security Act (ERISA), which governs certain 
health insurance  plans.  Employer groups have argued that unless 
companies have  the flexibility to decrease health care benefits when 
they become too expensive, they would be more inclined to opt for 
minimal  coverage at the beginning.  Related Stories: New York Times 
(11/10) P. A18; Wall Street Journal (11/10) P. A4; Journal of Commerce 
(11/10) P. 9A; Baltimore Sun (11/10) P. 1A 

"An Overwhelmed AIDS Center" Washington Post (Health) (11/10/92), P. 9  
(Melillo, Wendy)
     Due to the overwhelming number of HIV-positive patients who  need 
services, the staff at Washington, D.C., General Hospital's  center for 
AIDS patients is overburdened.  Since the clinic  opened in 1988, more 
than 1,200 patients have been treated, and   numbers are increasing at a 
drastic rate as officials at prisons, mental health centers, and 
homeless shelters refer more and more  indigent people with AIDS to the 
center.  New patients who are  not seriously ill may wait up to three 
months for an appointment. Also, funding for new drugs is difficult to 
acquire.  The  center's staff says that it took 10 months to get funding 
to  purchase DDI.  Among those people admitted to medical wards in  the 
hospital, nearly 1 in 3 has tested HIV-positive.  Because  D.C. General 
is the city's only public hospital, the AIDS center  is the primary 
treatment facility for area AIDS patients who are  poor or uninsured.  
It offers medical care, counseling, and  psychiatric services.  In 
addition to dealing with the  frustration of growing AIDS caseloads, the 
staff is often the  only emotional support for patients with no 
financial security.   Approximately 75 percent of the clinic's patients 
are unemployed, uninsured, or homeless, said social worker Rene 
Hernandez.  The  center is funded mainly through a $700,000 yearly 
appropriation  from the District Commission of Public Health, which 
covers  equipment costs and staff salaries.  It also receives about  
$100,000 in federal funds annually.   But D.C. General is already 
operating at a deficit because 65-70 percent of the patients have no 
insurance. 

"Sea Is the New Frontier for Developing Drugs" New York Times 
(11/10/92), P. C5
     Researchers are resorting to the sea to discover new sources of  
drugs to fight AIDS, cancer, and other diseases, a scientist  announced 
yesterday.  William Fenical, director of marine  research at the Scripps 
Institution of Oceanography, said,  "Despite an investment of around $10 
billion per year by the drug industry, we are realizing that 
microorganisms in the soil are  reaching an end point."  He said that 
some strains of  tuberculosis are becoming resistant to existing 
antibiotics and  researchers who are studying bacteria, fungi, and other 
soil  microbes are "frightened to death that we aren't finding new  
things."  But at the 30th annual New Horizons in Science  briefing, 
Fenical discussed the potential of obtaining medicine  from sea 
microbes.  Scientists have been studying sponges,  corals, sea squirts, 
and other sea creatures for ten years and  have developed some promising 
drugs for cancer, arthritis and  inflammation.  Fenical warned that it 
will be at least 5-10 years before marine microorganisms result in new 
medicines because the  newly discovered compounds first must be tested 
on animals.   Fenical's research, which was funded by the federal 
government  and Bristol-Myers Squibb, has discovered that bacteria, 
taken  from sea floor muds in the Bahamas, produce chemicals called  
macrolactins, which in experiments stopped the growth of melanoma and 
colon cancer cells and the herpes simplex and AIDS viruses. 

"Johnson's Accuser: Magic Knew Earlier" Washington Post (11/10/92), P. 
D2
     The woman who alleges that Magic Johnson infected her with HIV  
says he knew he was infected eight weeks before applying for a  life 
insurance policy for which he tested HIV-positive.  Newsweek magazine 
has obtained a copy of a letter from the woman, only  known as Jane Doe, 
to Johnson.  She says she wrote the letter on  Aug. 29, 1991, eight 
weeks before Johnson tested positive for HIV and two weeks before he was 
married.  The woman has filed a $2-  million lawsuit against the former 
Los Angeles Lakers basketball  player.  Newsweek also quotes a friend of 
the woman as saying  that she personally confronted Johnson with the 
news on Sept. 12, at which time Johnson said he had read the letter.  
Johnson has  admitted to having sex with the woman once in June 1990, 
but  denied ever receiving the letter.  The letter reads, "I have no  
idea when the bottom will fall out, so I must prepare now."  The  woman, 
a health-office worker, adds, "So you see, I can't be a  silent voice 
any longer, not even for you, Baby Boy."  The woman  alleges that she 
tested negative for HIV three times since 1986  and had been abstinent 
for eight months before having sex with  Johnson, said Newsweek.  
Johnson's attorney, Howard Weitzman, has indicated that the woman was 
promiscuous and could have  contracted the virus "from any number of 
men." 

"Rare Tree Used in AIDS Research Cut Down" United Press International 
(11/09/92)
     Chicago--A rare tree in Malaysia that produces an agent that  
seemed to prevent the growth of a form of HIV in laboratory tests has 
been cut down, said a published report on Monday.  D.D.  Soejarto, a 
plant explorer at the University of  Illinois--Chicago, discovered the 
tree, called Calophyllum  langerum, in a Malaysian rain forest in 1987, 
according to the  Chicago Sun-Times.  The newspaper added that a sample 
of sap from the tree produced a derivative that was effective against 
HIV-1  in tests by the National Cancer Institute.  Researchers said that 
in low concentrations, the compound stopped the virus' effects on CD4 
cells without damaging them.  The derivative also was  successful in 
fighting against strains of HIV-1 that were  resistant to AZT and other 
anti-AIDS drugs, but not against  HIV-2, researchers said.  Soejarto 
discovered that the tree had  been cut down when he returned to the 
forest.  He believes that  it was used for construction because it has 
no history of  medicinal use by local people and has too many branches 
to be  commercially valuable for timber.  The tropical forest contains  
five or six species of Calophyllum trees.  However, none of the  other 
samples Soejarto has researched has the potency of  calanolide, the 
derivative from the Calophyllum langerum species  tree, according to 
researchers.  Also serving as staff member of  the Field Museum of 
Natural History in Chicago, Soejarto heads  teams of botanists who hunt 
plants in Southeast Asia in hopes of  finding new medicines before the 
rain forests are depleted. 

"The Military and HIV Research" Washington Post (11/10/92), P. A16  
(Smith, W. Shepherd)
     Congress would have never let a lobbyist persuade it to divert  
money to the Army for AIDS research if it didn't believe science  was 
doing all it could to thwart the epidemic, writes W. Shepherd Smith Jr., 
President of Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy in  Washington, D.C.  
Jessica Mathews' Nov. 2 op-ed "Pork Barrel  Research" regarding gp160, a 
promising HIV treatment, tried to  paint a corrupt and uninformed 
picture of Congress, says Smith.   She talked about "ill-informed 
legislators" but she discussed  neither the testimony given to Congress 
on this issue during the  past several years nor the various briefings 
Hill staffers have  participated in on the subject.  It is clear that 
the lobbying  efforts of Russell Long were helpful to the product 
manufacturer, MicroGeneSys, says Smith.  However, his efforts did not 
ignore  the best interests of AIDS patients.  Most AIDS research has 
been only focused on end-stage AIDS rather than the spectrum of HIV  
disease.  Mathews seems to follow the National Institutes of  Health's 
suggestion that the U.S. should conduct comprehensive  trials of the 
most promising candidates as the "logical next  step."  But gp160 leads 
the field in promising scientific data  and should not have to undergo 
such a process.  Comparative  studies of vaccines will have value, but 
not at the expense of  getting a potentially life-extending product to 
HIV-positive  people as soon as possible.  The real message is that 
Congress  does want to do more to help resolve the AIDS epidemic, 
concludes Smith.

"Japan Confronts Sudden Rise in AIDS" New York Times (11/08/92), P. 13  
(Sterngold, James)
     The Japanese government has finally conceded that the nation is  
experiencing a sharp increase in AIDS cases and that it is not  
invulnerable to the disease.  The government recently launched  new 
programs to educate its largely uninformed citizens about  AIDS.  Some 
of those involved in fighting AIDS say the efforts  are too late to 
prevent the number of HIV infections from  escalating, and that the 
programs are still insufficient.  They  have suggested that the 
government undercounts those with HIV by  a large number and it is 
contributing to the disease's spread by  withholding information from 
those who have it.  However, they  did agree that the government seemed 
to have at least taken a  step toward acknowledging that AIDS is not a 
disease only of  foreigners, but also of Japanese.  In the past week, 
Tokyo's  subways have displayed advertisements by the municipal 
government advocating the use of condoms and encouraging understanding  
instead of chastisement for those who are HIV-positive.  A  television 
advertising effort has also been implemented using  renowned 
entertainers and athletes.  Although the number of  HIV-positive 
Japanese doesn't come close to those in the United  States, there are 
new worries that the alarming increase in  recent percentages and the 
pattern of its spread is similar to  other countries with a drastically 
high rate of HIV infection,  like Thailand.  In Japan there were 238 
AIDS/HIV cases reported  last year.  But in the first eight months of 
this year, the  figure was 326, and more than 100 of those were in July 
and  August alone, reports the Ministry of Health and Welfare. 

"From the Food and Drug Administration: First Drug Available  Under 
Parallel Track Policy" Journal of the American Medical Association 
(11/11/92) Vol. 268,  No. 18, P. 2491
     The Food and Drug Administration-approved drug stavudine (D4T),  an 
antiviral agent that functions by inhibiting HIV, has become  the first 
investigational drug to be made available under the new parallel track 
policy announced by the Public Health Service in  April, 1992.  The 
policy permits promising new drugs for treating AIDS and other HIV-
related conditions to be more readily  available to those AIDS patients 
who are unable to take  conventional therapy and are not eligible for 
clinical trials.   Early clinical trials with D4T involving 259 patients 
suggested  that the potential benefits of early expansion of use of the 
drug outweigh the risks.  The early trials showed that many patients  
experienced a temporary increase in the number of CD4 cells.   Many 
patients tolerated the drug well.  One major side effect was peripheral 
neuropathy, but this was usually reversible when the  dose was reduced 
or the drug was discontinued.  The new parallel  track protocol will 
require D4T to be available to patients who  have not responded to or 
are intolerant of AZT or didanosine  (DDI) and who don't qualify for the 
controlled clinical trial of  D4T that is intended to determine if the 
drug can prolong life or postpone the onset of AIDS.  Participants in 
the parallel track  study will include those who have experienced 
serious side  effects from other antiviral drugs or whose conditions 
have  worsened while taking those drugs. 

"News in Brief: Georgia" Advocate (11/03/92) No. 615, P. 26
     Churches should involve AIDS patients in their services and  
express compassion to families with loved ones dying of the  disease, 
according to speakers at an AIDS forum on Sept. 27  sponsored by First 
Baptist Church and Union Mission in Savannah,  Georgia.  Dianne Fuller, 
chairwoman of the pastoral care  committee at First Baptist Church said, 
"We wanted to foster  discussion.  We had the feeling the churches were 
really silent  about AIDS." 

"News in Brief: Oklahoma" Advocate (11/03/92) No. 615, P. 26
     State-subsidized distribution of AZT to needy AIDS patients in  
Oklahoma will end on Oct. 31, as a result of a bureaucratic  foul-up.  
The incident involved officials at two state agencies  who neglected to 
report that the program was in financial danger, said state 
representative Jeff Hamilton on Sept. 21.  Hamilton,  chairman of the 
state house of representatives' health and mental health committee, said 
that legislators were not aware that  federal funding for the program 
was being discontinued when they  voted to terminate state funding for 
it as well.  Separately,  Hamilton said Sept. 27 that public school 
administrators across  the state are not actively participating in AIDS 
education nor  are they properly abiding by the state's five-year-old 
mandatory  AIDS education law.  The state education department released 
a  report that suggested that students in Oklahoma public schools  
receive an average of two hours of AIDS instruction annually,  which 
Hamilton says is insufficient.  He said that school  administrators are 
given minimal training on AIDS issues and that teachers fear they will 
lose their jobs if they are frank in  answering students' questions 
about the disease. 

 *  The AIDS Daily Summary will not be published Wednesday, November  
11, 1992 in observance of Veterans Day. Type Selection or L for list,