                     AIDS Daily Summary 
                        July 1, 1996
     
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 National AIDS 
Clearinghouse, or any other organization. Reproduction of this 
text is encouraged; however, copies may not be sold, and the CDC 
National AIDS Clearinghouse should be cited as the source of this 
information. Copyright 1996, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD
     
     
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"U.N. Report: Human Index Ratings"
"Health Officials Stalking Source of Intestinal Illness Outbreak" 
"Cradle of AIDS Still Its Worst Victim"
"CDC Turns 50 Amid Growing Public Health Worries" 
"Immune System Drug Helps AIDS Patients - Study" 
"One Quarter of Nairobi Women Are HIV Carriers" 
"G7, Russia Vow to Fight AIDS, Other Diseases"
"A.M.A. Delays Drug Report in Dispute Over Its Findings" 
"Fusin--a Place for HIV-1 and T4 Cells to Meet"
"NIH Bucks Political Trend to Win Increased Funds From Congress" 
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"U.N. Report: Human Index Ratings"
Washington Times (07/01/96) P. A10; Toups, Catherine
     The HIV epidemic has become so widespread that it has for
the first time affected the ratings of dozens of countries in the 
"Human Development Index," a measure of the world's livability in 
the U.N. Development Program's annual Human Development Report.  
The annual report, to be released July 17, orders countries by 
their level of life expectancy, educational attainment, and basic 
purchasing power.  Some countries' standings have been seriously 
affected by HIV and AIDS.  Certain developing countries have even 
lost a decade of progress due to the disease, the report says.
     
"Health Officials Stalking Source of Intestinal Illness Outbreak" 
Washington Post (07/01/96) P. A1; Schwartz, John
     Public health officials are trying to track down the source
of an outbreak of a gastrointestinal infection that has caused 
diarrhea and other symptoms in hundreds of people in perhaps 12 
states and the District of Columbia.  The culprit, Cyclospora 
cayetanensis, was first identified in 1977 and has caused three 
previous outbreaks since 1990.  Officials suspect the disease is 
linked to contaminated fruit.  The Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention reported Friday that "fresh fruit--raspberries and 
mixtures of berries and other fruits" could be associated with 
the microbe.  The agency recommends that all fruit be washed 
before it is eaten.
     
"Cradle of AIDS Still Its Worst Victim" 
Reuters (07/01/96); Fox, Maggie
     In Africa, the cradle of AIDS, the epidemic has affected
more people than in any other region.  The Joint United Nations 
Program on HIV/AIDS reported that over 90 percent of all adults 
with HIV or AIDS live in developing countries.  More than 13 
million adults in sub-Saharan Africa are infected, and more than 
half of them are women.  More than 25 percent of infected women 
will infect their children.  The agency said that HIV probably 
started spreading in the region in the mid to late 1970s, before 
people recognized the problem.  In Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia, 
officials say the prevalence of HIV is starting to level off and 
decline.  More people are waiting to have sex, decreasing their 
number of partners, and using condoms. About 20 percent of all 
HIV infections are in Asia, and India has more infections than 
any country in the world.  Almost two percent of Bombay's 13 
million people are HIV-positive.  An aggressive education 
campaign may be helping to curb the spread of HIV in Thailand, 
where just over 2 percent of adults are infected.
     
"CDC Turns 50 Amid Growing Public Health Worries" 
Reuters (06/30/96); Morgan, David
     As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention celebrates
50 years of combating disease today, agency officials are 
concerned that the organization may not be as prepared for 
fighting infections as it was when founded.  While the agency was 
able to control diseases with vaccines in the 1940s and 1950s, 
the emergence of new infectious diseases and the re-emergence of 
old ones has threatened public health.  Among the diseases the 
CDC is working to control are AIDS, hantavirus, salmonella, and 
Lyme disease.  Jim Hughes, director of the CDC's National Center 
for Infectious Diseases, said that "public health departments are 
less prepared to confront those threats today then they were 50 
years ago."  Federal health officials have requested $125 million 
a year for a plan to establish adequate public health facilities 
across the country.
     
"Immune System Drug Helps AIDS Patients - Study" 
Reuters (06/27/96) 
     Neupogen, a new immunity-boosting drug from Amgen, was
recently approved for use by AIDS patients in Britain.  The drug 
increases the number of neutrophils, or white blood cells, in the 
body, and has been used to treat neutropenia, a failure of the 
immune system that makes AIDS patients more vulnerable to 
infection.  Mark Nelson, of London's Chelsea and Westminster 
Hospital, said Neupogen could improve AIDS patients' health and 
survival by staving off infection.  Philip  Keiser, director of 
HIV services at the University of Texas in Dallas, said HIV 
patients with neutropenia who were given the drug had one-quarter 
the bacterial infections of patients who were not treated.
     
"One Quarter of Nairobi Women Are HIV Carriers" 
Xinhua News Agency (06/29/96) 
     One quarter of women attending antenatal clinics in Nairobi
are infected with HIV, the United States Agency for International 
Development reported.  Early in 1995, 3.5 percent of all Kenyans 
were infected, agency official Gray Newton said.  This figure rose 
to 7.5 percent by the end of the year.  Newton asked the Kenyan 
government for money to help manage the AIDS epidemic.
     
"G7, Russia Vow to Fight AIDS, Other Diseases" 
Reuters (06/29/96) 
     Leaders of the Group of Seven industrial nations pledged
Saturday to pursue national research and promote international 
scientific cooperation to prevent and control AIDS and other 
infectious diseases.  The United States, Japan, Germany, France, 
the United Kingdom, Italy, and Canada, joined by Russia for the 
political part of their annual summit, said they would maintain 
assistance programs for countries hit hardest by infectious 
diseases.
     
"A.M.A. Delays Drug Report in Dispute Over Its Findings" 
New York Times (06/23/96); Wren, Christopher S.
     A draft report commissioned by an American Medical
Association committee that recommended legalizing marijuana has 
been shelved due to objections from other medical groups and 
doctors within the AMA.  The report, commissioned to evaluate 
ways to reduce the harm drugs cause, suggests allowing addicts to 
refuse treatment, dropping criminal charges for using illegal 
drugs, and devising a way to sell marijuana over the counter. 
John Morgan, a professor of pharmacology at the City University 
of New York Medical School, said AMA officials had asked him to 
prepare a report on harm reduction, which he interpreted as 
helping drug abusers minimize the danger to themselves without 
demanding that they stop using drugs.
     
"Fusin--a Place for HIV-1 and T4 Cells to Meet"
Nature Medicine (06/96) Vol. 2, No. 6, P. 640; Dimitrov, Dimiter 
S.
     Fusin, the recently identified human specific cofactor for
HIV-1, is critical to the virus' entry to human cells.  Its 
discovery provides insight to how viruses infect the body and how 
antiviral drugs should be designed to fight infection.  Drugs 
targeted against fusin might include molecules that mimic fusin 
or those which specifically bind to sites where fusin interacts 
with the HIV-1 envelope.  A drug targeting fusin might also be 
less vulnerable to drug resistance than current antiviral 
therapies, and the discovery of fusin raises hopes for vaccine 
development.  The history of AIDS research, with its great 
discoveries and disappointments, teaches researchers to be 
cautious when applying new findings.  To that end, fusin's 
structure is as yet unknown and may not be appropriate for 
antiviral activity.
     
"NIH Bucks Political Trend to Win Increased Funds From Congress" 
Nature (06/20/96) Vol. 381, No. 6584, P. 633; Wadman, Meredith
     A House of Representatives subcommittee has voted that the
Office of AIDS Research (OAR) should not have the power to 
distribute the National Institutes of Health's AIDS research 
budget to the 24 institutes.  The House Subcommittee on Labor, 
Health and Human Services, and Education defeated an attempt by 
Democratic lawmakers to return AIDS spending authority to the 
OAR.  Although a 1993 law gave the OAR authority over AIDS 
spending, Republicans took that power away in the 1996 spending 
bill.  Treatment Action Group's Mark Harrington criticizes the 
committee's decision, saying the OAR's spending authority had 
become a "political football."  He notes that in March, an 
118-member expert panel had recommended that the OAR be given 
responsibility for AIDS spending.  Other AIDS activists say that 
further recommendations in the report will be difficult to 
implement if the committee's decision stands.
     
     
