President Clinton has declared AIDS among minorities a crisis. But Clinton last year refused to use federal money to buy clean needles for drug addicts, one way to prevent HIV's spread. Frustrated at the ban, administration doctors urged local communities Thursday to raise the money themselves for needle exchanges. And grass-roots doctors who don't often get to the fancy international AIDS meetings hungered for the latest data, questioning experts on which drugs to use. Newly infected patients with low HIV levels might be all right not starting drugs for a while.
Some new drugs require far fewer.
But there were no easy solutions. Take Gallant's advice for doctors to test even newly diagnosed patients' blood to see if their HIV will resist certain drugs.