From: "ANNE WILSON, CDC NAC" AIDS Daily Summary December 22, 1993 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 1993, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD "In Minnesota, Settlement Is First for AIDS Bias by Health Insurer" New York Times (12/22/92) P. A19 (Freudenheim, Milt) A union welfare fund in Minnesota yesterday settled charges of discrimination against members with AIDS by agreeing to pay $100,000 to the estate of 36-year-old Mark Kadinger, a construction worker who died last November. The settlement represents the first major award in a case filed under the Americans With Disabilities Act involving AIDS-based denial of health insurance. In the agreement, the health plan of Local 110 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in St. Paul and the electrical contractors' association said they would lift the $50,000 payment ceiling for AIDS-related conditions. The defendants will also donate $2,500 to the Minnesota AIDS project, an advocacy group. In addition, the health plan agreed to present educational seminars for trustees of the plan regarding its obligations under the disabilities act. Before the act took effect last year, several decisions by federal appeals courts gave health plans wide leeway to refuse payments for AIDS and other especially costly illnesses under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the federal pension law. "Will Work for Health Coverage" Los Angeles Times--Washington Edition (12/22/93) P. B8 (Dutka, Elaine) Confronted with the potential loss of his Screen Actors Guild health insurance, HIV-positive Lee Mathis placed an ad in Variety magazine to seek work. "Healthy HIV-positive actor needs $3,500 worth of SAG work by Dec. 31 to maintain his health insurance," said the classified, accompanied by a photo of the actor. Mathis, who tested HIV-positive eight years ago and has remained asymptomatic, needs to earn the minimum necessary to qualify for SAG medical coverage by the end of the year. The actor appeared in three Broadway productions before heading to Hollywood, where he earned small parts on television and in film. But, says Mathis, without moonlighting as a bartender, he would not have been able to survive. Things have brightened for the actor since he placed his ad, including spots in "Lois & Clark" and "Murder in the First," a new courtroom drama. He is still, however, $2,400 short of his goal and is exploring alternate possibilities. Of the disease itself, Mathis says that he intends to live his life to the fullest. "Though some HIV-positive people collect their life insurance early or head to Hawaii to relax," he says, "I choose to think that AIDS isn't an inevitability." "Symbol of Hope Dies of AIDS" Toronto Globe and Mail (Canada) (12/21/93) P. A3 (Picard, Andre) Stephen Christmas, who as a child was a medical miracle, died Monday of complications from AIDS, which he contracted from contaminated blood. In 1952, it was discovered that he lacked the blood component called Factor 9, and the clotting disorder was subsequently named Christmas disease. The discovery was a major scientific advance which led to the isolation of Factor 9 for injection in concentrated form rather than subjecting hemophiliacs to whole-blood transfusions. The breakthrough saved the lives of thousands of hemophiliacs who, at the time, rarely lived beyond adolescence, and allowed many others to lead healthy, normal lives. "The tragic irony is the thing hemophiliacs needed to survive has led to their premature death," said Jerome Teitel, medical director of the hemophilia program at St. Michael's Hospital. "It's even more potent symbolism when you realize that he was the original Christmas." Some 1,000 Canadian hemophiliacs and blood-transfusion recipients have been infected with the AIDS virus through tainted blood, with nearly 400 of them already dead. Christmas was not only an inspirational symbol for hemophiliacs, but he was also an activist who was critical in bringing the tainted-blood issue to national attention. "Expanded IND for AIDS Immune Reconstitution Cell-Transfer Therapy Submitted to FDA" Business Wire (12/21/93) Fort Lauderdale, Fla.--Center for Special Immunology (CSI), a subsidiary of Health Professionals Inc. (HPI), has submitted an Investigational New Drug Application to the Food and Drug Administration for a Phase I clinical trial of its Immune Reconstitution Cell-Transfer Therapy. The treatment involves monthly infusions of licensed human intravenous immune globulin followed by closely-matched peripheral blood lymphocytes from an HIV-negative donor, generally a close relative. The patient is usually in the late stages of AIDS disease, and is maintained on antiretroviral and prophylactic therapy against opportunistic infections. The results of a pilot clinical program provide some support for expanded study. "The Immune Reconstitution Treatment Program was developed by physicians affiliated with CSI in an effort to help their patients with late stage AIDS who had failed conventional therapies and for whom there was no acceptable alternative therapy," said HPI's chairman and CEO, William M. Reiter. "Cell transfer and expansion therapies have the potential to fill an urgently needed and critical role in evolving AIDS therapies." "Stalking a Vaccine" Washington Technology (12/02/93) Vol. 8, No. 17, P. 25 (Brendler, Beau) While most potential AIDS vaccines focus on the outer "envelope" of HIV made up of proteins and able to change 1,000 faster than the second fastest virus, Cel-Sci Corp. of Alexandria, Va., is taking an out-of-the-mainstream approach. The company's vaccine, HGP-30, was the first in the world to concentrate on the core of HIV, but is still a relative unknown. It is based on a protein in the core of the virus that does not change throughout its strains and is a synthetic copy of the core protein so that it cannot cause AIDS in healthy people. Early trials indicated that the vaccine produced killer T-cells, which destroy AIDS-infected cells before they take over the body. Other studies observed immune responses triggered by the vaccine. In addition, blood immunized with the drug and placed in mice without an immune system showed a 75 percent rate of protection. Cel-Sci has entered into a joint venture with Alpha 1 Biomedicals to oversee the AIDS research. "Court Supports Hospital Transfer" AIDS Alert (12/93) Vol. 8, No. 12, P. 195 A U.S. Court of Appeals has decided that a Houston hospital has the legal authority to transfer an HIV-infected surgical technician to a clerical job in the facility's purchasing department. The court ruled that, although the risk of transmission to patients is minimal, a "cognizable risk of permanent duration with lethal consequences" is sufficient grounds to disqualify the technician from his position, according to a report in the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) Health Law Reporter. The court also found that the technician "often comes within inches of open wounds and places his hands in the body cavity roughly once a day." He also reportedly suffered five needlestick wounds while working, the report said. The technician, an employee of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, argued that the job transfer was a violation of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. ""Origin of AIDS" Update" Rolling Stone (12/09/93) No. 671, P. 39 A March 1992 article in Rolling Stone magazine explored the origins of the AIDS virus. The article focused on the possibility that the virus might have been transmitted inadvertently from monkeys to humans during a mass polio-vaccination campaign conducted in the Belgian Congo from 1957 to 1960. The contention about the vaccine developed by Dr. Hilary Koprowski was mentioned, not as fact, but as one of several disputed and unproven theories. Following publication, the Wistar Institute, where the Congo vaccine was made, formed a committee of six prominent scientists who examined the theory. After more than six months of study, it was concluded that the possibility that the AIDS virus was transmitted through the vaccine was "extremely low." A seaman in England, with no known affiliation with the vaccine, died of AIDS in 1959, cited the committee. Because he was the first confirmed case of AIDS, the committee said that it was almost 100 percent sure that the large polio vaccine trial in the Congo was not the origin of AIDS. In the December 1993 issue of Rolling Stone, the publication clarifies that it did not intend to suggest that there was any scientific proof supporting the theory, or that Koprowski was in any way responsible. The magazine further apologizes for any damage to Koprowski's reputation caused by the article. "Buckeyballs and HIV" Discover (12/93) Vol. 14, No. 12, P. 22 Buckyballs, soccer ball-shaped molecules fascinating scientists around the globe, and HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, seem an unlikely pair. But researchers at the University of California at San Francisco claim buckyballs are able to cripple the enzyme machinery essential for the AIDS virus to reproduce. Buckyballs could possibly act as inhibitors of HIV protease, an enzyme of the virus necessary for HIV replication. Simon Friedman, a graduate student of chemistry at UCSF, decided to test the idea by using modified buckyballs, called fulleroids, to enable himself to work in the aqueous environment of a living cell. When he mixed a solution of fulleroids with HIV protease, he found no evidence that the HIV protease had been clipping the original polyprotein in two, as it should have been doing. Researchers at Emory University decided to expand the experiment. They discovered that fulleroids actually block HIV from reproducing in cultures of infected white blood cells, without harming healthy cells. Whether buckyballs will ever be developed into a practical treatment for AIDS is uncertain, for many other substances have been shown to disable HIV in the lab. The true test is whether buckyballs can do the same, and do so safely, in the human body of a person infected with the AIDS virus--a question that will take years to resolve. "Broadcast News" Advocate (12/14/93) 644, P. 38 After years of public relations work on AIDS awareness campaigns and upon the discovery that he is infected with HIV, Chris DeChant decided he wanted to make information on the virus even more accessible. The fruit of his ambition is "Aware: HIV Talk Radio," a Chicago-based show that is now in syndication nationwide. First broadcast in August of 1992, DeChant's show can now be heard in Los Angeles, Dallas, St. Louis, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and South Bend, Ind., as well as on two additional stations in Chicago. His goal is to eventually be heard on 30-50 stations across the country. "Aware" has explored such issues as criminal HIV transmission laws, understanding sexual addiction, coping with HIV in the workplace, and natural healing. "Every show is there not only to give people resources, but to teach them ways that they can take care of themselves, take care of the people around them, and strive for health in life, whether they're infected or not," DeChant says. "HIV Sufferers Have a Responsibility" Time (12/13/93) Vol. 142, No. 25, P. 100 (Etzioni, Amitai) A massive prevention drive is a viable strategy to save lives at risk for AIDS, says Amitai Etzioni, founder of the communitarian movement. Homosexuals, drug addicts who share needles, and patients who received blood transfusions before 1985 must be urged to undergo HIV testing, says Etzioni. Those with a positive diagnosis should inform past sexual partners and warn future ones. The more responsible the infected, the fewer dead trailing behind them, Etzioni asserts. Some insist that HIV testing and contact tracing are a "cruel hoax," given the already overcrowded status of AIDS facilities. But Etzioni contends that, although tragically there is no cure to save the lives of those who are already infected, it is the duty of the same to try to help save the lives of others. Intimacy without prior disclosure is like "serving arsenic in a cake," says Etzioni. And neglecting to notify former sexual contacts allows them to unknowingly pass on the virus to uncounted others. Another concern about testing and tracing is that it could cause an infected person to lose a job, health insurance, housing, and privacy. Etzioni suggests that a major AIDS prevention campaign be accompanied by intensive public education about how the disease is not transmitted, as well as by safeguards on data banks and greater penalties for those who discriminate against or abuse HIV-positive people. Finally, for those who wince at the perceived cost of HIV testing, Etzioni points to the suggestion by the Centers for Disease Control, in which hospitals ask patients whose blood is already being tested if they would consent to having it screened for HIV, too. The test would be only $60 or less, and if those found positive were to infect on average just one less person, the tests would pay for themselves.