                     AIDS Daily Summary
                      December 22, 1994

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 1994, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD


************************************************************
"Ares-Serono AG Drug Cleared for Treatment of AIDS Weight Loss"
"AIDS Breakthroughs and AIDS Politics"
"Around the Nation: Addenda"
"Prison Inmate Has TB, 5 Staffers Test Positive"
"Pioneer AIDS Organization Leaves Bankruptcy, Plans to Raise 
Funds"
"Ohio's Universal Guaranty Life Sued by HIV-Positive Florida 
Lawyer"
"ChemTrak Enters Home HIV Testing Market with Acquisition of 
Coonan Clinical Laboratories"
"Clinton to Seek More AIDS Money"
"Chaperoning a Pathogen"
Out of the Closet on the Right to Die"
************************************************************

"Ares-Serono AG Drug Cleared for Treatment of AIDS Weight Loss"
Wall Street Journal (12/22/94) P. B8
     The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of a 
human-growth hormone, Serostim, made by Ares-Serono AG for the 
experimental treatment of severe weight loss in AIDS patients.  
AIDS advocacy groups hailed the FDA action because there is no 
other therapy for AIDS-related wasting syndrome.  During Phase 
III clinical trials, patients injected with the drug gained 
significantly more weight than those receiving the placebo.  
Ares-Serono hopes to seek FDA marketing approval in 1995.  In the
meantime, Serostim may be available to AIDS patients diagnosed 
with wasting syndrome at $150 per six-milligram dose.  The 
treatment is daily and lasts for three months.
      
"AIDS Breakthroughs and AIDS Politics"
Washington Post (12/22/94) P. A19;  Hentoff, Nat
     The discovery that AZT, when given to HIV-infected pregnant 
women, reduces the risk of HIV transmission to infants by 
two-thirds is surrounded by controversy.  Mandatory prenatal 
testing could prevent transmission of a fatal infection to the 
child, but would violate the mothers' privacy.  AIDS czar 
Patricia Fleming says that she would have providers "offer" the 
test, meaning voluntary counseling.  Dr. Philip Pizzo of the 
National Institutes of Health said that if all pregnant women 
were tested for HIV and then administered AZT, many children's 
lives would be saved.  Dr. Ruth Macklin, a bioethicist at the 
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said, "It is an invasion of 
privacy.  It threatens the women's interests."  She added that 
one has to balance freedom against lives.  Finally, the American 
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) adamantly opposes mandatory HIV 
testing of mothers during pregnancy or at birth.
      
"Around the Nation: Addenda"
Washington Post (12/22/94) P. A14
     After learning that the adoptive parents of a 3-year-old girl are
infected with HIV, a St. Petersburg, Fla., judge reversed her 
adoption.  The girl has been living with the couple since June 
1992.  Related Story: Washington Times (12/22) P. A10
      
"Prison Inmate Has TB, 5 Staffers Test Positive"
Baltimore Sun (12/22/94) P. 1B;  Shatzkin, Kate
     Inmates and staff at two of Maryland's state prisons are being 
tested for tuberculosis (TB) after an inmate was discovered to be
infected with a rare strain of the disease that is resistant to 
seven drugs.  While five of the 82 staff members who had the most
contact with the prisoner have tested positive for TB bacteria, 
none of them have developed active tuberculosis.  The 
approximately two dozen inmates housed near the infected man have
also produced negative skin tests and x-rays.  Testing of all 400
staff members will not be completed for at least another month.  
Skin tests will be redone on those who were exposed to the 
prisoner because an infection can take several months to show up.
The inmate is the third in the Maryland prison system to be 
diagnosed with multiple-drug resistant TB--and the first in 
Maryland to be resistant to so many drugs.
      
"Pioneer AIDS Organization Leaves Bankruptcy, Plans to Raise 
Funds"
Philadelphia Inquirer (12/22/94) P. B1;  Kaufman, Marc;  Collins,
Huntly
     Now that its plan for reorganization has been accepted, Blacks 
Educating Blacks About Sexual Health Issues (BEBASHI)--the 
pioneering AIDS education group--is emerging from bankruptcy.  
BEBASHI will begin fundraising again and will be in a better 
position to obtain government grants, officials said.  Lorina 
Marshall, chairwoman of the BEBASHI board, said the court's 
approval of the plan would permit BEBASHI to initiate a private 
campaign aimed at raising approximately $125,000 to help 
eliminate the group's debt and continue its programs.  The 
organization was founded during the mid-1980s when awareness of 
AIDS was limited in the black community.  Rashidah Hassan, former
executive director of BEBASHI, said that despite the bankruptcy, 
the group was able to continue providing services to more than 
375 people with HIV or AIDS, as well as counseling, testing, and 
information to thousands more.
      
"Ohio's Universal Guaranty Life Sued by HIV-Positive Florida 
Lawyer"
Knight-Ridder (12/22/94);  McCabe, Robert
     Universal Guaranty Life in Ohio has been sued by a HIV-positive 
Florida lawyer who claims that the company sold life insurance 
policies to people with AIDS, cancer, and other illnesses and 
then tried to drop them as policyholders.  Gay activist Allan H. 
Terl accuses the company of racketeering and is seeking the 
original $50,000 coverage promised under his policy as well as 
unspecified damages.  Terl said that the "Protector Series" 
policies were sold without requiring a physical examination and 
without asking whether the applicant had HIV.  After having 
filled out the application and sent in the first payment, Terl 
received a letter from the president of Universal Guaranty Life 
stating that the agent who sold the policy was not licensed in 
Florida and had been soliciting business fraudulently.  Terl was 
offered a settlement of his paid premium, plus $1,000 if he would
voluntarily surrender his policy within 10 days.  Terl refused 
and is demanding that the company honor the contract.  The agent 
has been confirmed to be licensed in Florida but under the first 
name "Vanda" not "Wanda," which appears on her business card.
      
"ChemTrak Enters Home HIV Testing Market with Acquisition of 
Coonan Clinical Laboratories"
Business Wire (12/22/94)
     ChemTrak Inc. has entered into an agreement to acquire Coonan 
Clinical Laboratories Inc. (CCL).  Subject to certain conditions,
the closing is expected to occur within 30 days.  CCL is in the 
third year of developing a home HIV-1 blood collection kit and is
in the final stages of preparing a Pre-Market Approval 
application for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  Under the
agreement, ChemTrak will pay CCL a maximum of 400,000 newly 
issued shares of ChemTrak common stock.
      
"Clinton to Seek More AIDS Money"
Philadelphia Inquirer (12/21/94) P. A3;  Connell, Christopher
     Officials announced Tuesday that the Clinton Administration will 
seek $91 million in additional funding next year to care for 
people with AIDS.  The administration will also keep a special 
housing program for AIDS patients.  The president has already 
increased spending on the programs, which are part of the Ryan 
White Act, by 82 percent.  The programs provide direct medical 
and social services to people living with HIV and AIDS.  Intense 
lobbying by AIDS groups, Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros, and
AIDS policy director Patsy S. Fleming convinced the Clinton 
budget office to halt a proposal to stop funding a $186 million 
housing assistance program.  Housing Opportunities for People 
With AIDS (HOPWA) was enacted by Congress in 1990 to deal with 
the special housing problems faced by HIV and AIDS patients.  The
Office of Management and Budget wanted to eliminate HOPWA and 
switch some of the funds to block grants for areas hardest hit by
the AIDS epidemic.
      
"Chaperoning a Pathogen"
Nature (11/24/94) Vol. 372, No. 6504, P. 319;  Cullen, Brian R.; 
Heitman, Joseph
     Studies conducted by Franke et al and Thali et al identify a 
human protein, cyclophilin A, that promotes the formation of 
infectious HIV-1 virions.  Brian Cullen and Joseph Heitman, both 
of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Genetics
at Duke University Medical Center, question where the protein 
acts in the HIV-1 life cycle and how it exerts its effect.  They 
suggest that cyclophilin A may play a role in virion 
morphogenesis, or that the protein may act during initial stages 
of the next viral replication cycle.  One hypothesis about 
cyclophilin A is that it catalyses a "trans" to "cis" 
isomerization of a peptidyl-prolyl bond.  Although the finding 
that an analogue of the immunosuppressive drug cyclosporin 
A--which inhibits proline isomerase activity--also blocks 
cyclophilin A incorporation and HIV-1 infectivity is inconsistent
with the hypothesis, there are also data suggesting that 
cyclophilin A can act as a true protein--independent of its 
action as a proline isomerase.  Cullen and Heitman are 
pessimistic that cyclosporin A might be useful in the treatment 
of AIDS because the levels of the drug needed to prevent HIV-1 
replication are also sufficient to block the enzymatic activity 
of the cyclophilins.  In addition, because SIV--a similar 
infection found in simians--is not dependent on cyclophilin A for
infectious virion production, HIV-1 may be able to mutate to a 
cyclosporin-A resistant form.
      
"Out of the Closet on the Right to Die"
American Medical News (12/12/94) Vol. 37, No. 46, P. 13;  Morain,
Claudia
     Physicians are helping young, politically savvy AIDS patients in 
the push for assisted suicide.  "I've always believed every 
person has the right to freedom of decisions about their own 
body, including the timing and mode of their own death," 
testified AIDS specialist Dr. Peter Shalit.  Earlier this year, 
Shalit was a plaintiff in the Washington state case--propelled by
a woman with AIDS--that overturned the state's 140-year-old ban 
on assisted suicide.  Similar cases are taking place around the 
country.  Ralph Mero, executive director of Compassion in Dying, 
said that nearly half of the group's calls for aid-in-dying come 
from people with AIDS.  "It is a captive population which has 
already been condemned to death," said Mero.  "They want 
options."  A survey in the New England Journal of Medicine of 938
doctors found that 53 percent thought assisted suicide should be 
legal, and 40 percent said that would be willing to participate 
in it--there was much less support for euthanasia, which many 
defined as active killing.  Assisted suicide proponents contend 
that legalizing aid-in-dying would end the suffering caused by 
failed suicides and would better protect the patients by being 
open and regulated.
      
