Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 10:45:52 +0500 From: ghmcleaf{CONTRACTOR/ASPEN/ghmcleaf}%NAC-GATEWAY.ASPEN@ace.aspensys.com Subject: CDC AIDS Daily Summary 10/05/95 AIDS Daily Summary October 5, 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 ************************************************************ "Court: Company that Sells Policies of AIDS Patients to Investors Must Follow SEC Rules" "Firm Kept Quiet About Risk of AIDS in Medicine" "Exemption on AIDS Set in Health Shift" "Cangene Corp.: Funds to Be Put in Escrow for Possible Legal Costs" "AIDS Looms Large Over Cambodian Military, Police" "Inquiry Judge Questions Top Red Cross Official" "AIDS Researchers, Activists Fight Crisis in Clinical Trials" "AIDS Update: AIDS Is Their Biggest Fear" ************************************************************ "Court: Company that Sells Policies of AIDS Patients to Investors Must Follow SEC Rules" USA Today (10/05/95) P. 2B The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Wednesday that a federal district court has upheld an injunction against Waco, Texas-based Life Partners, a company which buys life insurance policies from AIDS patients and then sells them to investors. The company and its president were charged in 1994 with selling millions of dollars in unregistered securities. Life Partners, however, claims that because it is selling insurance, it does not need to follow SEC registration requirements. Although the court acknowledged that Life Partners offered a useful service for AIDS patients and that no complaints had been filed by buyers or sellers of AIDS-related policies, it noted that the defendants "cannot supplant the registration requirements Congress has chosen to adopt." Related Story: Washington Post (10/05) P. B14 "Firm Kept Quiet About Risk of AIDS in Medicine" Philadelphia Inquirer (10/05/95) P. A1; Shaw, Donna Documents to be made public today by attorneys for a Canadian board of inquiry reveal that Armour, a Maryland-based subsidiary of Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Inc., knew that its heat-treating process did not kill HIV and that it ordered one of its scientists to repress a study revealing this information. Armour is the defendant in at least 321 pending lawsuits brought by hemophiliacs who contracted HIV from tainted blood clotting medicine. Hemophiliacs in Canada and the United States, many of them children, contracted the virus that causes AIDS from tainted Factorate. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by 321 plaintiffs to have their cases combined into a class action suit. "Exemption on AIDS Set in Health Shift" New York Times (10/05/95) P. B14 New Yorkers with chronic health needs, such as people with HIV, will be excluded from a plan to move welfare families from Medicaid into managed-care health networks, a New York City official announced on Wednesday. According to Maria K. Mitchell, special adviser to the Mayor for health policy, the city's managed-care plan contained "an exception for anybody with a chronic condition," which can be applied to anyone "seeing a physician because they are HIV positive." The announcement was praised by Housing Works, a non-profit group that serves people with HIV and AIDS, and the Women's Advocacy Group of Housing Works, which recently found that 95 percent of the Medicaid managed-care plans in New York City were ill-prepared to deal with HIV-infected clients. The city's plan to shift families on welfare into the managed-care system must obtain the federal government's approval, which is expected by the end of the month. "Cangene Corp.: Funds to Be Put in Escrow for Possible Legal Costs" Wall Street Journal (10/05/95) P. B4 Toronto-based Cangene Corp., a developer of an HIV diagnostic test, will put $1 million Canadian dollars (U.S.$752,400) in escrow for expenses that may result from a threatened legal action by Roche Holding AG of Switzerland. Roche has submitted a letter of intent to sue the Dutch/Swedish Akzo Nobel NV, which incorporates Cangene's technology into its HIV diagnostic kits. "Cangene has some obligation to assist Akzo in dealing with [the potential lawsuit.] We believe the possible suit is not supported by the facts," explained James Rae, Cangene president. "AIDS Looms Large Over Cambodian Military, Police" Reuters (10/05/95); Dobbs, Leo Health experts say that HIV is spreading rapidly through Cambodia's military and police. New statistics show that nearly 8 percent of 380 police blood samples tested positive for HIV, while close to 8 percent and 5 percent of military and military police blood samples, respectively, were HIV-positive. In Koh Kong, a province that borders Thailand, more than 30 percent of the military and 10 percent of the police are infected, versus 8 percent and 6 percent, respectively, for the capital city Phnom Penh. The rate among civilian blood donors in January was close to 4 percent. Hor Bun Leng, the director of the HIV/AIDS Program in Cambodia, said that these men are frequently far from home and that "they often meet with commercial sex workers and most of them are uneducated...sometimes they can't read our [HIV-AIDS awareness] messages." Leng added that efforts were in progress to address the HIV/AIDS problem among the military and police, but these moves were hampered by a lack of human resources and money. "Inquiry Judge Questions Top Red Cross Official" Toronto Globe and Mail (10/04/95) P. A8 Canadian Justice Horace Krever persistently questioned George Weber, secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, on Tuesday about why some of the organization's own board members "displayed a lack of understanding of some of the most elementary, fundamental facts about blood" at a time when fatal viruses were entering the supply. At least two former board members admitted last week that they did not know the difference between blood products. Weber was secretary-general of the Canadian Red Cross during the time when the country's blood supply became HIV-contaminated. Judge Krever also asked whether the board members were trained about blood. Weber claimed that the board was well-trained, citing visits to blood centers and national reference laboratories as evidence. "AIDS Researchers, Activists Fight Crisis in Clinical Trials" Science (09/22/95) Vol. 269, No. 5231, P. 1666; Nowak, Rachel At the recent workshop, "Current Issues in AIDS Clinical Trials: Clinical Endpoint Confirmation Studies," held at the National Institutes of Health, officials from the Food and Drug Administration, representatives of drug companies, AIDS researchers, and activists acknowledged that new strategies are required to keep patients in clinical trials long enough so that effective drugs can be identified. The problem is that because only somewhat effective drugs are available by prescription, and many experimental drugs are available through other sources, persons infected with HIV lie to get into the trials, fail to follow the rules, and often drop out. "We have to educate people about the value of AIDS research for ourselves and for those who follow," said David Barr of the Gay Men's Health Crisis. The participants resolved to relax the conditions of trials by permitting patients to take additional drugs after, or in conjunction with, the test and placebo treatments. Meanwhile, no conclusion was made about the viability of "surrogate markers" as a measure of treatment efficacy. "AIDS Update: AIDS Is Their Biggest Fear" Men's Health (10/95) Vol. 10, No. 8, P. 61 When asked which single issue most concerns them about their teenagers' health and safety, almost 30 percent of parents responding to a Prevention magazine/CNN poll said that AIDS was their greatest fear. Their response compared to that of 22 percent, who were concerned about their child riding with a drunk driver, and the remaining percentage, who worried about sexual activity, drinking and driving, and drug use.