AIDS Daily Summary September 21, 1995 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 1995, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD ********************************************************** "AIDS, HIV Patients Hurt by Medical Bias" "2 Firms Will Offer Wider Access to Experimental AIDS Drugs" "Alpha 1 to Sell Stake in Anti-AIDS Business" "TV: Tenacious TB" "Greek Police Hunt "AIDS" Kidnappers" "Needles Vetoed in New Bedford" "AIDS Data Animation Maps Evolving US Epidemic" "Project Alerta: Building Lives to Save Lives" ************************************************************ "AIDS, HIV Patients Hurt by Medical Bias" Baltimore Sun (09/21/95) P. 1A; Sugg, Diana K. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University report that HIV-infected women and minorities develop AIDS sooner than others because they are not receiving adequate health care. A study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the difficulties in obtaining health care outweigh demographic factors in determining the speed of disease progression and survival. Until now, researchers thought that some groups were dying earlier because of biological variations. However, a team of scientists led by Dr. Richard E. Chaisson discovered that of the nearly 1,400 HIV-infected patients being treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital, one-third died with no significant survival differences according to sex, race, housing status, type of health insurance, education, or drug use. The study also corroborated a previous finding that showed that HIV-positive women, blacks, and injection drug addicts referred to Hopkins were much less likely than white males to have received proper care in the past. "2 Firms Will Offer Wider Access to Experimental AIDS Drugs" Washington Post (09/21/95) P. A3; Gillis, Justin Two pharmaceutical makers announced this week that they would increase patients' access to experimental AIDS drugs called protease inhibitors--moves which mean that more than 7,000 people will receive the drugs under "compassionate use" programs next year. Nutley, N.J.-based Hoffmann-La Roche said that 2,000 patients will be able to participate in an upcoming lottery for its drug, in addition to the nearly 2,300 who were selected earlier this year. Meanwhile, Abbott Laboratories of Abbott Park, Ill., said that at least 1,400 individuals would be offered its drug by early 1996. A third company, Merck & Co. of Whitehouse Station, N.J., is now in the advanced testing stages of its protease inhibitor, which will be offered to about 1,400 patients this fall. "Alpha 1 to Sell Stake in Anti-AIDS Business" Washington Times (09/21/95) P. B9 Alpha 1 Biomedicals Inc., Bethesda, Md., will sell its 50 percent share of Viral Technologies Inc. (VTI) to Alexandria, Va.-based CEL-SCI Corp., which already controls 50 percent of the company. The two companies formed VTI nine years ago to design a drug that would prevent, diagnose, or treat AIDS. Under the agreement, Alpha 1--which will now focus on the development of drugs for cystic fibrosis, chronic bronchitis, and asthma--will receive about $750,000 worth of CEL-SCI common stock. "TV: Tenacious TB" Wall Street Journal (09/21/95) P. A20; Phillips, Barbara D. On Monday Oct. 2, PBS will air "The People's Plague: Tuberculosis in America." Diane Garey and Lawrence Hot's two-hour documentary presents the disease as a public health threat, a civil liberties problem, and a killer of millions. The program tells the story of the scientists, doctors, and patients affected by tuberculosis, as well as the fresh air sanitoriums, strange treatments, multidrug therapy, and drug-resistant strains that have appeared over the years. "Greek Police Hunt "AIDS" Kidnappers" Reuters (09/20/95) Greek police said on Wednesday that a boy was abducted and threatened with HIV-infection unless his family paid a $174,000 ransom. The boy was kidnapped after he got off a school bus last week, held for five days, and then released when the money was paid. In their ransom note, the kidnappers claimed to be AIDS patients, and noted that they had "nothing to lose." According to the police, the kidnappers appeared to know about the family's financial status, as they originally requested $553,000 in ransom, a sum which the boy's grandmother has recently won in the lottery. "Needles Vetoed in New Bedford" Boston Globe (09/20/95) P. 31 New Bedford, Mass. Mayor Rosemary Tierney rejected a needle-exchange program on Tuesday that had been approved last week by the City Council. Tierney explained she could not support the program without the endorsement of the town's police, who oppose the plan. "AIDS Data Animation Maps Evolving US Epidemic" Journal of the American Medical Association (09/13/95) Vol. 274, No. 10, P. 784; Stephenson, Joan A new animated mini-movie on the Internet illustrates how AIDS spread across the United States. The project represents the efforts of Dr. Timothy R. Cote, a resident in pathology at the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center, to show the epidemic's gradual development within the time frame of a movie, instead of a series of data points on a graph. Cote teamed up with the Consortium for International Earth Sciences Information Network in Saginaw, Mich.; Cleveland, Ohio's Environmental Modeling Inc.; and Information Management Systems of Silver Spring, Md., to achieve his goal. The result is a short animated graphic that contains 600 images-- maps of the United States with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's AIDS mortality rates plotted by counties--displaying weekly "snapshots" of AIDS deaths between 1981 and 1993. According to Cote, the mini-movie format presents the data in a universally comprehensible form. "Anyone from any background or walk of life can look at this graphical representation and understand from the data what's happened [in the AIDS epidemic] over the past three years," he explains. "Project Alerta: Building Lives to Save Lives" United States Conference of Mayors: AIDS Information Exchange (08/95) Vol. 12, No. 4, P. 8 The goal of Albuquerque, N.M.'s Project Alerta was to train women in the county jail to be HIV peer educators and counselors. The now-defunct project--a collaborative effort between the State Department of Health AIDS Prevention Program, the Albuquerque Family Health Center, and the Bernalillo County Detention Center--emphasized increasing the self-esteem and confidence of the peer educators, and paid the participants for their work. When selecting the participants, the Project Alerta staff tried to select women representative of the jail population, but also used such factors as the neighborhoods the women came from and would return to, as well as their high-risk activities. The two-day, 10-hour training consisted of group rulemaking, team-building exercises, HIV 101, HIV testing and counseling issues, listening exercises, role playing, and a discussion of the relationship between addiction and HIV infection. During the six-week period they spent working as peer educators, the women established their own goals and objectives, and were required to develop a plan for spreading the information to other inmates, as well as those outside the prison. Although the organizations involved considered Project Alerta a success, the high cost of paying the women to participate and the fact that providing HIV prevention education to inmates was not specifically within the scope of any of the groups involved forced the program's cancellation.