                     AIDS Daily Summary 
                        May 22, 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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"Rules on HIV Testing a Blessing or a Curse?"
"France Drops Expulsion of Zairean Mother With AIDS" 
"HIV Saliva Testing Kit Exhibits 100% Accuracy"
"New Trial in Rape of U.S. Toddler Who Died of AIDS" 
"Off-Label Drug Use in HIV Infection:  Common and Widespread" 
"HIV-1 Replication in Brain: A Late Development"
"The Estimated Prevalence and Incidence of HIV in 96 Large U.S. 
Metropolitan Areas"
"Aileen Getty Comes Clean"
"AIDS: Paper Trail"
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"Rules on HIV Testing a Blessing or a Curse?"
Houston Chronicle (05/21/96) P. 9A;  Jones, Rachel L.
     Mandatory HIV testing of newborns, a proposal that was
recently was accepted by Congress, represents an infringement of 
privacy to some but is a good health policy to others.  The Ryan 
White Care Act, signed into law on Monday, provides states with 
$10 million to implement HIV counseling, voluntary testing, and 
medical treatment for pregnant women, and testing of newborns.  
States that do not show that their rates of maternal and 
pediatric AIDS have decreased risk losing federal AIDS funding in 
three years.  Critics of mandatory testing say it can lead to 
discrimination, loss of health insurance, and child custody.  
Others, however, including Cassandra Mariner, an HIV-infected 
mother of six, strongly support such testing, noting that they 
would not care to bring a child into the world to possibly go 
through what they have with the illness.
     
"France Drops Expulsion of Zairean Mother With AIDS" 
Reuters (05/21/96)
     The planned expulsion of a Zairean woman with AIDS who
immigrated to France illegally was stopped due to protests by the 
AIDS group ACT-UP.  The woman's two-year-old child, also infected 
with HIV, was born in France and would have been separated from 
her mother.  ACT-UP and Sol En Si, a charity for children with 
AIDS, intervened, arguing that sending the mother to Zaire would 
be like killing her, because she could not receive proper medical 
care there, and that it was not right to separate the mother and 
child.
     
"HIV Saliva Testing Kit Exhibits 100% Accuracy" 
Reuters (05/21/96)
     A new HIV test, made by Israel's Orgenics Ltd., has been
found to be 100 percent accurate at detecting HIV antibodies in 
saliva.  The study was led by University of Maryland researcher 
Rebecca Saville, who said the test requires little training and 
because it does not require blood collection.  The test, called 
ImmunoComb, gives results within 30 minutes.
     
"New Trial in Rape of U.S. Toddler Who Died of AIDS" 
Reuters (05/21/96)
     A 41-year-old Montgomery, Ala., man accused of raping a 
four-year-old girl who later died of AIDS, went on trial for the 
second time Tuesday.  A retrial was ordered after a deadlocked 
jury could not reach a verdict last December.  The girl, who was 
raped by Willie Dean Robinson when he was babysitting her in Feb. 
1992, died of AIDS last month.  The girl's mother first reported 
a problem when her daughter was found to have gonorrhea several 
weeks after she was in Robinson's care.  When the girl's 
infection did not clear up, she was tested for HIV.  Robinson 
also tested positive for the virus and admitted to police that he 
had gonorrhea at the time the child was raped.  The accused was 
not charged with murder because it is not certain whether 
Robinson knew he was HIV-positive in 1992 and it is thus not 
possible to prove he meant to kill.
     
"Off-Label Drug Use in HIV Infection:  Common and Widespread" 
Reuters (05/21/96)
     Off-label drug use for treating HIV is common and often 
represents community standards of care, according to Carol L. 
Brosgart of Community Consortium in San Francisco.  In the 
Journal of AIDS & Human Retroviruses, Brosgart and coworkers 
report that they evaluated drug prescription information provided 
by primary care providers for more than 1,100 patients with HIV. 
The researchers found that 81 percent of patients received at 
least one drug off-label and that 40 percent of all reported drug 
use was off-label.  The majority of the off-label drug use was 
for the treatment and prevention of HIV-related opportunistic 
infections, Brosgart said.
     
"HIV-1 Replication in Brain: A Late Development" 
Reuters (05/21/96)
     HIV-1 can be detected in the brain early in infection, but 
replication of the virus is constrained until the terminal phase 
of AIDS encephalitis, a group of European researchers report.  
Francesca Chiodi and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in 
Stockholm tested parenchumal tissue from eight HIV-infected 
patients in different stages of infection.  They found that an 
increased number of viral copies in the brain was associated with 
histopathological evidence of HIV-1 encephalitis.  The 
researchers suggest that, while the virus may enter the brain 
early in infection, replication is limited until the terminal 
phase of AIDS encephalitis.
     
"The Estimated Prevalence and Incidence of HIV in 96 Large U.S. 
Metropolitan Areas"
American Journal of Public Health (05/96) Vol. 86, No. 5, P. 642; 
Holmberg, Scott D.
     To estimate the size and direction of the HIV epidemic in
large U.S. cities, Scott D. Holmberg of the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention analyzed information on the epidemic in 96 
cities.  City-specific studies of at-risk persons, information on 
reported AIDS cases in each city, and information provided by 
local and state health professionals was reviewed.  The study 
focused on injection drug users, men who have sex with men, and 
those at risk from heterosexual activity.  In the cities studied, 
Holmberg estimated there to be 1.5 million injection drug users, 
1.7 million gay and bisexual men, and 2.1 million at-risk 
heterosexuals.  He said that among them, there are 565,000 
prevalent and 38,000 incident HIV infections and about 700,000 
prevalent and 41,000 new HIV infections each year in the United 
States.  Approximately half of all estimated new infections occur 
among injection drug users, and most of them occur in 
northeastern cities, as well as Miami and San Juan.  Most 
prevalent HIV infections are still found in gay and bisexual men, 
although incidence--except in young and minority gay men--is much 
lower than it was 10 years ago.  High prevalence of HIV in 
at-risk heterosexuals suggests that transmission among this group 
could increase.
     
"Aileen Getty Comes Clean"
POZ (05/96) No. 14, P. 48;  Lewis, Judith
     Aileen Getty, granddaughter of the late oil tycoon J. Paul
Getty, says having AIDS has improved her life by saving her from 
former problems.  She had been in seven institutions, had seven 
miscarriages, was anorexic, and a self-mutilator.  Although 
Aileen says she would rather not be in the public eye, she feels 
a responsibility to do so, to battle the public's fear of AIDS.  
She says AIDS can make drug addiction worse, that she turned to 
cocaine to deal with the disease.  After almost dying from 
toxicity and weakness, Aileen decided that life was worth living, 
even with alcoholism and AIDS.  She first tested positive for HIV 
in 1985, and was diagnosed with AIDS shortly after.  Aileen did 
not disclose her disease until 1991, after Magic Johnson went 
public.  She later revealed that she had contracted HIV through 
an extramarital affair, which ended her marriage with Christopher 
Wilding, son of Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding.  Aileen is 
now engaged to be married, and remains close to Taylor.  Aileen 
has become an AIDS activist, helping the Los Angles-based 
Homestead Hospice raise money for shelters for people with AIDS. 
She has two sons, whom she has an open relationship with about 
her disease.
     
"AIDS: Paper Trail"
Advocate (05/14/96) No. 707, P. 14
     The failure of New Orleans officials to fill out application
forms for federal grant money will result in the city losing more 
than $1 million in AIDS funding.  Marty Rudegeair, hired as a 
consultant to help the city with the paperwork, says city 
officials were not interested in completing the application, so 
he did it on his own time at the last minute.  The episode has 
angered AIDS activists, as it is the second of its kind this 
year.
     
     
