                     AIDS Daily Summary

                      January 3, 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 Clearinghouse, or any other organization. Reproduction
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Copyright 1995, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD



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"Seattle Officials Seeking to Establish a Subsidized Natural
Medicine Clinic"
"Nationline: Needle Attack"
"Baboon Marrow Won't Help Victims of AIDS"
"Bell's Palsy is Linked with Herpes Infection"
"Drug Giants Still Hunger for Biotech"
"Plasma Facility a First in Canada"
"Fighter of HIV Has a Bad Side"
"Gilead Sciences Announces Commencement of Topical Opthalmic
Cidofovir Clinical Study by Storz"
"Identification of RANTES, MIP-1(alpha), and MIP-1(beta) as the
Major HIV-Suppressive Factors Produced by CD8+ T Cells"
"Killing Kids Softly: Rudy Crew's Dangerous AIDS Education Plan"

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"Seattle Officials Seeking to Establish a Subsidized Natural
Medicine Clinic"
New York Times (01/03/96) P. A10;  Egan, Timothy
     The King County Council, which governs the greater Seattle
region, has voted to establish the nation's first
government-subsidized natural medicine clinic.  The new
naturopathic clinic will enable poorer Americans to take
advantage of the alternative treatments, which have primarily
been the province of better-educated, wealthier individuals.
Proponents of natural medicine note that the techniques involved
are quickly taking hold.  "People want to get well in a world
where costs and an obsession with high technology are forcing
cutbacks in conventional medicine," said Merrily Manthey, a
trustee at both a naturopathic college and a large urban hospital
in Seattle.  In response to the growing demand for such medicine,
the National Institutes of Health established in 1992 the Office
of Alternative Medicine, which has since given out millions of
dollars worth of grants for research into natural therapies.
Bastyr University, for example, has received $850,000 to study
alternative methods of treating AIDS.  But for the King County
Council, the decision to establish the naturopathic clinic has
been difficult.  The council has voted twice in the past year in
favor of the clinic, but officials still have not determined
whether the funds will come from the state, the federal
government, or the county.

"Nationline: Needle Attack"
USA Today (01/03/96) P. 3A;  Leavitt, Paul
     The escaped mental patient accused of stabbing a 6-year old girl
with a hypodermic needle on a New York subway train on Dec. 2 is
incompetent to stand trial, a state judge ruled.  The decision is
based on two psychiatric reports which say that Angel Coro does
not understand the charges and cannot help his lawyers.  A judge
is deliberating whether to order Coro to be screened for HIV.

"Baboon Marrow Won't Help Victims of AIDS"
Philadelphia Inquirer (01/03/96) P. A11;  Caplan, Art
     The killing of a baboon for the recent baboon bone marrow
transplant into a dying AIDS patient might be justified if a
human life were saved or if a significant amount of knowledge
were obtained, argues Art Caplan, director of the Center for
Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia
Inquirer.  This experiment, however, will not generate either
result, Caplan writes.  He notes that there has been little
research done on bone marrow transplantation in primates and that
the related costs are enormous.  The risk of viral transmission
is also very high.  Caplan concludes by questioning the value of
studying a treatment that would require the killing of thousands
of baboons at a cost upwards of $350,000 per patient when the
procedure will not even cure the patient.

"Bell's Palsy is Linked with Herpes Infection"
New York Times (01/03/96) P. C8;  Brody, Jane
     Japanese researchers have identified the common cold sore virus,
herpes simplex, as the likely cause of most cases of Bell's
palsy, an untreatable, usually temporary, facial paralysis.  The
condition is caused by an inflammation of a major facial nerve
and causes pain in the jaw and numbness and drooping on one side
of the face.  Dr. Shingo Murakami and his colleagues at the Ehime
University medical school report in The Annals of Internal
Medicine that they found pieces of herpes virus genes from the
involved nerves and muscle tissue in 11 of 14 patients with
Bell's palsy.  The finding suggests that acyclovir, an antiviral
agent used against herpes viruses, might be used with the
anti-inflammatory drug prednisone to treat Bell's palsy.  The
treatment is unlikely to cure the condition because the facial
nerve has already been damaged when the first symptoms appear,
but it may lessen the effects.

"Drug Giants Still Hunger for Biotech"
Baltimore Sun (01/02/96) P. 9C;  Guidera, Mark
     Analysts predict a good year for biotechnology, as large
pharmaceutical firms continue to seek alliances with smaller
biotechnology companies.  According to Eddie Hedaya, a
biotechnology industry analyst with BioVest, "the biotech
companies have the innovations and the research; the drug
companies have the money and the foresight."  New changes at the
FDA that ease restrictions on biotechnology and speed up the
approval process also bode well for the industry, especially for
companies developing treatments for cancer, AIDS, and other
life-threatening conditions.  Experts predict that 1996 will see
several blockbuster drug approvals from the FDA as well as
intensified research on the human genome.

"Plasma Facility a First in Canada"
Toronto Globe and Mail (01/01/96) P. A1;  Picard, Andre
     The Canadian Red Cross is planning to open the country's first
plasma-collection facility in the coming weeks.  The country's
lack of plasma played a large role in the tainted-blood tragedy
which left more than 1,200 hemophiliacs and transfusion patients
infected with HIV between 1980 and 1985 and another 12,000 people
infected with hepatitis C between 1990 and 1995.  Seven plasma
facilities are planned, and if enough donors cooperate, Canada
should be self-sufficient in plasma by the end of 1998.  To do
so, each center would need about 4,000 donors to give 15 times a
year.

"Fighter of HIV Has a Bad Side"
Houston Chronicle (01/01/96) P. 6C;  Kolata, Gina
     The new discovery of a natural defense against HIV involves a
paradox.  The substances secreted by white blood cells appeared
to stop HIV, yet these so-called chemokines are also closely tied
to numerous diseases in which the immune system either causes the
disease or reacts so strongly to an infection that it causes
substantial harm.  Dr. Charles McKay, director of immunology at
Leukosite, a biotechnology firm in Massachusetts, notes that in
recent years, "almost every major pharmaceutical company has a
program looking at the function of chemokines and trying to block
them."  The new findings, reported by a team of researchers led
by Dr. Robert Gallo of the Institute for Human Virology at the
University of Maryland and by a second team led by Dr. Reinhard
Kurth of the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Germany, offered hope that
they might lead to new treatments against HIV infection.

"Gilead Sciences Announces Commencement of Topical Opthalmic
Cidofovir Clinical Study by Storz"
Business Wire (01/02/96)
     Storz Instrument Company has begun a Phase I human clinical trial
of topical opthalmic cidofovir for the potential treatment of
several viruses that can cause external infections of the eye,
said the company's collaborative partner Gilead Sciences, Inc.
The study will attempt to gauge the safety and pharmacokinetics
of the eye-drop formulation of the drug.  Gilead, meanwhile, is
independently conducting multiple clinical programs based on the
broad-spectrum antiviral activity of cidofovir, including some
for the possible treatment of cytomegalovirus retinitis.  The
company also has drugs in clinical studies for the treatment of
viral diseases caused by HIV, human papillomavirus, and hepatitis
B.

"Identification of RANTES, MIP-1(alpha), and MIP-1(beta) as the
Major HIV-Suppressive Factors Produced by CD8+ T Cells"
Science (12/15/95) Vol. 270, No. 5243, P. 1811;  Cocchi,
Fiorenza;  DeVico, Anthony L.;  Garzino-Demo, Alfredo
     Researchers from the National Cancer Institute and Advanced
BioScience Laboratories report in the journal Science that they
identified the  RANTES, MIP-1(alpha), and MIP-1(beta) chemokines
as the key HIV-suppressive factors (HIV-SF) produced by CD8+ T
cells.  These cells' HIV-SF activity was completely inhibited by
a combination of anti-RANTES, -MIP-1(alpha), -MIP-1(beta)
antibodies.  Recombinant human versions of these chemokines
generated a dose-dependent inhibition of various strains of
HIV-1, HIV-2, and simian immunodeficiency virus.  The researchers
believe that the findings may be useful for the prevention and
treatment of AIDS.

"Killing Kids Softly: Rudy Crew's Dangerous AIDS Education Plan"
Village Voice (12/26/95) Vol. 40, No. 52, P. 41;  Friedman, David
     New York Schools Chancellor Rudolph Franklin Crew is urging the
Board of Education to approve a controversial new AIDS curriculum
for high school students.  The plan was submitted by the Board's
AIDS Advisory Council, a 23-member panel that includes a chairman
who believes "there is a homosexual agenda to take over our
schools--and [his] job is to make sure it doesn't happen."  The
council has made three particularly notable revisions to the
policy, including the elimination of a classroom demonstration of
the correct way to open and use a latex condom.  Students who
request such instruction will be shown "in private."  Some
activists want the board to delay its vote, in hopes of garnering
additional support for the current policy, but they concede that
whenever the vote is taken, the more conservative approach will
dominate.  When Chancellor Crew arrived from Washington, where he
served as Superintendent of Schools in Tacoma, many advocates of
comprehensive AIDS education believed he supported their cause
because Washington is thought of as politically progressive.
They were proven wrong, however, when shortly after his arrival
in New York, Crew announced that he opposes condom-availability
programs for high school students.  According to the Sexuality
Information and Education Council of the United States and NARAL,
the situation in New York is part of a national trend.  Unlike
other states, however, the religious right movement in New York
is dominated by a coalition of Roman Catholics, Protestants,
Orthodox Jews, and Muslims, instead of fundamentalist Christians.

