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There were renewed calls for strong advocacy and financing to sustain gains already made, like promoting more antiretroviral therapy in poorer countries, along with male circumcision and behavior modification. Dr. Jorge Saavedra, director of the Mexican national AIDS program, underscored the imperative for such information by saying that 'if you do not follow the epidemiology of H.I.V.' and the scientific evidence, 'then we will lose the fight against H.I.V.' Now, a new test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention promises a greater ability to pinpoint hot spots of new infections and to control them more quickly, at least in developed countries.

Jorge Saavedra, director of the Mexican national AIDS program, underscored the imperative for such information by saying 'if you do not follow the epidemiology of HIV' and the scientific evidence, 'then we will lose the fight against HIV.' 'Development of a vaccine is still more of an art than a science,' said Tadataka Yamada, an official of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle. He added, 'No one country, any one scientist, any one team of scientists will develop the vaccine.' 'The lack of secure and reliable drug supplies is the Achilles' heel of antiretroviral programs,' said Gregg Gonsalves of the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa. 'Central medical stores in many countries often cannot handle this task.'

A follow-up look at men who were circumcised in an African study shows that the procedure's protective effects against H.I.V. last for at least three and a half years, researchers said at the 17th International AIDS Conference here last week.

In the study, all the men and women agreed in writing to participate after they were informed about other ways to prevent HIV infection, wound care and abstention from sex after the surgical circumcision. The men were offered free condoms and the couples were counseled and tested for HIV. There were 1,015 HIV-infected men who agreed to having circumcision immediately or waiting two years for purposes of a scientific control group. The timing was chosen at random, researchers said

''It's likely that some cultural influences are involved, and I am sure that people are doing what their grandmothers and aunties did in practices carried through generations,'' Dr. [Kenneth L. Dominguez] said. The first two cases involved boys from Miami infected in the mid-'90s. One boy's infection was detected when he was 39 months old, shortly before his death, after previously testing negative for the virus twice. The mother, who was infected, reported pre-chewing food for the boy. The second boy's mother was uninfected but lived with an infected aunt who pre-chewed his food. He survives. In the third case, a girl from Memphis was found to be infected in 2004 at 9 months old after testing negative for the virus three times. Her mother was infected and pre-chewed food for her daughter

Experts not involved in the Minnesota work called it 'a landmark achievement' and 'a stunning' development, but they and the Minnesota researchers cautioned that the dream, if ever realized, was still a decade away. With modifications, scientists should be able to grow a human heart by taking stem cells from a patient's bone marrow and placing them in a cadaver heart that has been prepared as a scaffold, [Doris A. Taylor] said in a telephone interview from her laboratory in Minneapolis. The early success 'opens the door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas -- you name it and we hope we can make it,' she said

Medicine's dream of growing new human hearts and other organs to repair or replace damaged ones received a significant boost Sunday when University of Minnesota researchers reported success in creating a beating rat heart in a laboratory.

A new, highly drug-resistant strain of the ''flesh-eating'' MRSA bacteria is being spread among gay men in San Francisco and Boston, researchers reported on Monday. The new strain seems to have ''spread rapidly'' in gay populations in San Francisco and Boston, the researchers wrote, and ''has the potential for rapid, nationwide dissemination'' among gay men. Of the alternatives recommended by the C.D.C. and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (Bactrim), clindamycin and a tetracycline, ''this strain is resistant to two of those three,'' he added. ''In addition, the new strain is resistant to mupirocin, which has been advocated for eradicating the strain from carriers.''

With modifications, scientists should be able to grow a human heart by taking stem cells from a patient's bone marrow and placing them in a cadaver heart that has been prepared as a scaffold, [Doris Taylor] said in an interview by telephone from her laboratory in Minneapolis. The early success 'opens the door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas - you name it, and we hope we can make it,' she said. Todd McAllister of Cytograft Tissue Engineering in Novato, California, said, 'Doris Taylor's work is one of those maddeningly simple ideas that you knock yourself on the head, saying, 'Why didn't I think of that?' ' McAllister's team has used a snippet of a patient's skin to grow blood vessels in a laboratory, and then implanted them to restore blood flow around a patient's damaged arteries and veins. 'The heart is a beautiful organ,' Taylor said, 'and it's not one that I thought I'd ever be able to build in a dish.'

''We can say we have a culprit with the smoking gun at the scene of the crime, but that still doesn't mean he's guilty,'' Dr. [Patrick S. Moore] said in a telephone interview. ''We have a long way to go to prove that this agent is really the cause,'' he said. ''But the fact that the virus is so strongly associated with the tumor is at least a very good bet that it is playing an important role.'' ''It is not every day,'' Dr. [Anthony S. Fauci] said, ''that you have some pretty compelling molecular proof that a virus is associated, likely causally, with development of a particular cancerous process.''