                     AIDS Daily Summary 
                      August 22, 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
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Copyright 1995, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD

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"Upjohn, Pharmacia to Merge, Creating One of the World's 10 
Largest Drug Firms"
"Isolation Ends for Prisoner who Refused Testing for TB"
"Chronicle: Deborah Harry in a Summer's-End AIDS Event"
"Collins Won't Appeal Aide's Victory in Landmark AIDS Ruling"
"Runners and Walkers Tackle the Grand Canyon "Rim to Rim 
Challenge" for Cancer and AIDS Research on Labor Day"
"No Cheers for Baboon to AIDS Patient Xenotransplant"
"Cancer Drug May Join the AIDS Arsenal"
"Texas Compromise Salvages AIDS Prevention Education Program"
"The Classification of AIDS Cases: Concordance between Two AIDS 
Surveillance Systems in Italy"
"FDA Announces Public Workshop and Advisory Subcommittee Meeting 
on Current Issues in AIDS Clinical Trials"
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"Upjohn, Pharmacia to Merge, Creating One of the World's 10 
Largest Drug Firms"
Journal of Commerce (08/22/95) P. 4B
     U.S.-based Upjohn Co. and Pharmacia of Sweden have announced that
they will merge later this year, creating one of the 10 largest 
pharmaceutical companies in the world.  The new company will be 
called Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc., and will have an annual revenue 
close to $7 billion and a market capitalization of $13 billion.  
"Through the merger, Pharmacia gains access to Upjohn's strong 
U.S. sales, marketing, and distribution infrastructure...while 
Upjohn gains additional sales and marketing support in Europe," 
explains Pharmacia's Jan Ekberg, the proposed chairman of the new
group.  The new company expects to release or extend 28 products 
during the next three years, including therapies for AIDS, 
Parkinson's disease, and cancer.
      
"Isolation Ends for Prisoner who Refused Testing for TB"
New York Times (08/22/95) P. B5;  McKinley Jr., James C.
     A judge has decided that a murderer kept in solitary confinement 
for more than three years because he would not take a 
tuberculosis (TB) test should be returned to a normal cell at the
Attica Correctional Facility.  Prisoner Paul Jolly says that 
shortly after he began serving his life sentence, he converted to
Rastafarianism--a religion which he claims prohibits him from 
taking a standard TB test.  Because state prison doctors said his
refusal to take the routine test could endanger other prisoners, 
however, Jolly was placed in "medical keeplock."  Jolly then 
sued, alleging that his First Amendment right to practice a 
religion had been violated, and that his isolation represented 
cruel and unusual punishment.  In his decision last Friday, the 
judge wrote, "The plaintiff, in choosing to undergo the 
conditions of medical keeplock for a period of over three and a 
half years, has shown remarkable conviction for what he was 
stated are his religious beliefs."
      
"Chronicle: Deborah Harry in a Summer's-End AIDS Event"
New York Times (08/22/95) P. B2;  Steinhauer, Jennifer
     Singer Deborah Harry will appear in a Sept. 3 concert that will 
benefit an AIDS charity.  Harry, who became famous in the late 
1970s with punk-infused disco, says that although she is asked to
do many benefits and auctions, she refuses all but the 
AIDS-related events.  "One reason I am doing this," she adds, "is
because it is the end of the summer.  For everyone I know who is 
confronted with this illness, that season is symbolic because 
they have made it through another year."  The concert will take 
place at the Provincetown, Mass., town hall and will benefit the 
Provincetown AIDS Support Group.
      
"Collins Won't Appeal Aide's Victory in Landmark AIDS Ruling"
Detroit News (08/18/95);  Zagaroli, Lisa
     Rep. Barbara-Rose Collins (D-Mich.) has missed the filing 
deadline for an appeal in the case of a former aide who claimed 
he was fired because she thought he had AIDS.  Because Collins 
has not appealed, Bruce Taylor will now receive compensation for 
more than seven months' back pay and attorney's fees.  Jim 
Davison, a media services administrator for the House of 
Representatives, said he knew of no other instance in which a 
lawmaker had had a case before the Office of Fair Employment 
Practices.  Taylor claimed his firing last December--two days 
after his homosexual partner died of AIDS--was in violation of 
the Americans with Disabilities Act.  The law protects 
individuals who are perceived to be infected or have AIDS, as 
well as those who actually have the disease.  According to 
Taylor, both Collins and her chief of staff repeatedly asked 
about his health prior to his dismissal.  Although they deny the 
allegations, the judge ruled that Taylor was perceived to be 
infected and that Collins and her chief of staff had decided he 
"would require time off for health reasons."
      
"Runners and Walkers Tackle the Grand Canyon "Rim to Rim 
Challenge" for Cancer and AIDS Research on Labor Day"
Business Wire (08/21/95)
     On Labor Day weekend, 20 individuals will run or walk 23.5 miles 
in the Grand Canyon "Rim to Rim Challenge" to raise funds for the
City of Hope National Medical Center and Beckman Research 
Institute in Duarte, Calif.  The participants will start at the 
canyon's North Rim, descend 6,200 feet to the bottom of the 
canyon, go across, and up 4,000 feet to the South Rim.  "This is 
another opportunity for me to test my personal limits while doing
something to help City of Hope, a cause I believe in," says Tim 
Peterson, the event's organizer and leader.  Peterson recently 
ran up and down the almost 14,000-foot-high Mt. Kilimanjaro for 
City of Hope, an organization that conducts research and 
treatment for such diseases as HIV/AIDS, leukemia, and diabetes.
      
"No Cheers for Baboon to AIDS Patient Xenotransplant"
Lancet (08/05/95) Vol. 346, No. 8971, P. 369;  Thompson, Clare
     The xenotransplant of baboon bone marrow into an AIDS patient has
several transplant scientists worried.  The operation, they 
argue, is severely flawed and has little experimental 
justification.  "The likelihood that this will work is extremely 
small," claims surgeon Hugh Auchincloss of Massachusetts General 
Hospital.  "The difficult procedure will probably hasten [the 
patient's] death and not prevent it."  The transplant is based on
the assumptions that the baboon marrow is HIV-resistant, and that
"facilitator cells" will allow engraftment without the 
development of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD).  Suzanne 
Ildstad--one of the two scientists involved in the 
procedure--plans to isolate the facilitator, stem, and T cells 
from the baboon bone marrow; filter out the T cells, which are 
thought to be the cause of GVHD; repackage the stem and 
facilitator cells; and transplant them into the patient.  The 
problem with the concept, however, is that Ildstad is the only 
one who has been able to identify the facilitator T cells.  These
and other technical questions should have been answered by animal
experimentation, some opponents say.
      
"Cancer Drug May Join the AIDS Arsenal"
Journal of the American Medical Association (08/16/95) Vol. 274, 
No. 7, P. 523;  Voelker, Rebecca
     The cancer drug hydroxyurea may not be a success in itself, but 
researchers claim it is particularly effective in fighting HIV 
when used in combination with the nucleoside analogue didanosine 
(ddI).  Dr. Franco Lori, director of the new Research Institute 
for Genetic and Human Therapy (RIGHT) in Italy, is trying to 
determine why HIV-1 does not replicate in quiescent cells.  
According to Lori, his hypothesis that focused on the lack of 
deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs) was correct.  "When HIV 
enters a quiescent cell, there is not enough food to survive," he
explains.  Research published in the journal Science later showed
that in vitro anti-HIV activity is increased without additional 
toxicity when hydroxyurea is used with ddI.  Lori thinks that 
hydroxyurea may reduce problems related to drug resistance.  When
used with ddI, he says, hydroxyurea lessens viral replication so 
significantly that there is less virus able to mutate, which 
could potentially delay the onset of ddI-resistance.  In addition
to Lori's trial, which has a U.S. counterpart that began testing 
last month, hydroxyurea research is also being conducted in 
France and other U.S. locations.
      
"Texas Compromise Salvages AIDS Prevention Education Program"
Nation's Health (08/95) Vol. 25, No. 11, P. 8
     In April, the Dallas County Commission voted to discontinue a 
program in which condoms, bleach kits, and "explicit" AIDS 
prevention information were distributed.  Now, however, the 
commission has reached a compromise that will restore the program
by transferring a state grant from the county health department 
to a private agency.  Following the April decision, the Texas 
Public Health Association and the American Public Health 
Association lobbied to reverse the decision.  One key concern was
the risk of losing a five-year, $1.2 million grant from the 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that funded an 
HIV/AIDS training program for Texas health professionals.  The 
program was operated by the county health department, and would 
have been eliminated by the April vote.  In June, however, the 
Commissioners restored the program, but forbade county employees 
from participating and said that any AIDS prevention information 
distributed by the county health department would have to be 
reviewed to guard against "explicit material."
      
"The Classification of AIDS Cases: Concordance between Two AIDS 
Surveillance Systems in Italy"
American Journal of Public Health (08/95) Vol. 85, No. 8, P. 
1112;  Serraino, Diego;  Franceschi, Silvia;  Dal Maso, Luigino 
et al.
     A new study compared how the Italian AIDS Registry--the country's
national surveillance system--and the Italian Cooperative Group 
on AIDS-Related Tumors classified 725 AIDS cases.  For both male 
and female injection drug users, gay men, and people infected 
with HIV through contaminated blood or blood products, there was 
a high degree of concordance in classification.  There was 
reduced concordance among heterosexual men, particularly among 
those whose risk group was not identified.  These discrepancies 
suggest the continued need for accurate monitoring of AIDS 
reporting by transmission category.
      
"FDA Announces Public Workshop and Advisory Subcommittee Meeting 
on Current Issues in AIDS Clinical Trials"
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
     The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is holding a public 
workshop on current issues in HIV clinical trials on Sept. 6 and 
7, 1995.  At the workshop--to which registration is 
required--members of the industry and the public will be able to 
discuss issues regarding the design and conduct of clinical 
trials of drugs for the treatment of HIV, as well as propose 
strategies for overcoming known obstacles.  A major challenge to 
developers of HIV treatments is the successful design and conduct
of clinical confirmatory trials, which are needed to provide the 
data used to confirm the clinical benefit of drugs that have 
received accelerated approval.  The workshop will be followed by 
a joint meeting on Sept. 9 of subcommittees of the Antiviral 
Drugs Advisory Committee and the National Task Force on AIDS Drug
Development.  The subcommittees will hear summary presentations 
from the workshop,  and will discuss recommendations on the 
scientific design of future HIV clinical trials.  For more 
information, call the AIDS Clinical Trial Information Service at 
(800) 243-7012.
      
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