Faculty Bibliography

More than 11 million children have been orphaned by AIDS since the epidemic was recognized in 1981, and the number is expected to rise to 13 million by the end of 2000, the United Nations said Wednesday in a report to mark World AIDS Day. The number of AIDS orphans is believed to far outstrip the number of children orphaned by other causes. The soaring number of AIDS deaths could undermine the political stability of affected countries, said Dr. Peter Piot, chief of the U.N. AIDS program. All but 5 percent of the world's children orphaned by AIDS live in sub-Saharan countries in Africa, according to the U.N. report

Is AIDS a disaster inadvertently brought on by early testing of a polio vaccine in Africa in the 1950s? In 'The River' (Little, Brown, $35), Edward Hooper suggests that an experimental oral polio vaccine might have been made with chimpanzee tissue contaminated with an ancestor of the virus that was to cause AIDS. Although he has no medical expertise, Hooper, 48, has done a prodigious amount of research since 1990. In 1,070 pages, including extensive footnotes, he builds a case based on circumstantial evidence that he accumulated in hundreds of interviews and exhaustive library research. He finds close coincidence in both time and place between the earliest cases of AIDS and the testing of an oral vaccine developed at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia and, later, in two laboratories in Belgium. From 1957 to 1960, the vaccine was given to a million people in what are now Rwanda, Burundi and Congo

More than 11 million children have been orphaned by AIDS since the epidemic was recognized in 1981, and the number is expected to rise to 13 million by the end of 2000, the United Nations said Wednesday in a report to mark World AIDS Day. The soaring number of AIDS deaths could eventually undermine the political stability of affected countries, said Dr. Peter Piot, head of the U.N. program on AIDS. All but 5 percent of the world's children orphaned by AIDS live in countries below the Sahara, UNAIDS and UNICEF said in the report. In the past, age-old networks of immediate and extended families would have assumed the care of orphans. But, the report said, 'the traditional African extended family is breaking down under the unprecedented burden of the pandemic.'

More than 11 million children have been orphaned by AIDS since the epidemic was recognized in 1981, and the number is expected to rise to 13 million by the end of 2000, the United Nations said yesterday in a report to mark World AIDS Day. Under the UN definition, 11 per cent of all children in Uganda and 9 per cent in Zambia were orphans in 1997, the latest date for which data are available. In many other African countries like Zimbabwe the number was 7 per cent. The UN report did not provide a comparison with countries in other areas. Before AIDS, about 2 per cent of all children in developing countries were orphans. No figure exists for orphans in African countries before AIDS, UN officials said. AIDS orphans are at higher risk for malnutrition and its effects, illness, abuse and sexual exploitation than children orphaned by other causes, the report said. Also, AIDS orphans face the stigma and discrimination that often shadow the disease, leaving them socially isolated and often deprived of education and other basic social services

Is AIDS an epidemic inadvertently brought on by human testing of a polio vaccine in Africa in the 1950s? In 'The River,' Edward Hooper suggests that an experimental polio vaccine might have been made with chimpanzee tissue that had been tainted with an ancestor of the AIDS virus. He finds coincidences in the time and place between the earliest AIDS cases and the testing of a vaccine developed at Philadelphia's Wistar Institute and, later, in two Belgium labs. From 1957 to 1960, the vaccine was given to a million people in what are now Rwanda, Burundi and Congo

More than 11 million children have been orphaned by AIDS since the epidemic was recognized in 1981, and the number is expected to rise to 13 million by the end of 2000, the United Nations said today in a report to mark World AIDS Day. The number of AIDS orphans is believed to far outstrip the number of children orphaned by other causes. The soaring number of AIDS deaths could eventually undermine the stability of affected countries, Dr. Peter Piot, the head of the United Nations program on AIDS, said in an interview here. All but 5 percent of the world's children orphaned by AIDS live in countries below the Sahara, Unaids and Unicef said in the report. In the past, age-old networks of immediate and extended families would have assumed care of orphans. But, the report said, ''the traditional African extended family is breaking down under the unprecedented burden of the pandemic.''

Ever since American doctors discovered AIDS in 1981, the origins of the viral disease have been a scientific mystery. Many scientists believe that H.I.V.-1, the main AIDS virus in the world, derives from a simian virus in chimpanzees. But the unanswered question is how the virus jumped to humans. The most widely accepted theory is that passage must have occurred in blood-to-blood contact, like a bite or cut during the slaughter of chimpanzees

The reason his file is so extensive is that Mr. [John] McCain, a Navy pilot whose jet was shot down over North Vietnam, was treated for major fractures and other injuries during more than five years as a prisoner of war and received the standard psychological evaluations that were given to all P.O.W.'s after their release. Mr. McCain's campaign carefully controlled the release of the records in what appeared to be an effort in part to counter discussions of whether Mr. McCain, a Republican, has the temperament to be president. The campaign released a statement by Dr. Michael M. Ambrose, director of the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies, and Dr. Jeffrey L. Moore, a clinical neuropsychologist at the center, that said: ''Senator McCain has never been diagnosed with or treated at the center for a psychological or psychiatric disorder. He has been subject to an extensive battery of psychological tests and following his last examination in 1993, we judged him to be in good physical and mental health.''

Of all the infectious diseases that afflict Americans, meningitis ranksnowhere near the top. But meningococci, the bacteria that are a cause of bothmeningitis and other serious health problems, bring chaos disproportionate tothe low case numbers. That is why a federal health advisory panel urged the 520,000 collegefreshmen who live in dormitories to get the meningococcal vaccine, even thoughit is not expected to prevent much more than a couple of dozen cases. Peakseason for the disease is November through January. The panel, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention onimmunization practices, called on universities and health professionals totell college freshmen and their parents about the availability of awell-established vaccine that is safe and effective against most subtypes ofthe bacteria that affect college- age Americans

More than 11 million children have been orphaned by AIDS since the epidemicwas recognized in 1981, and the number is expected to rise to 13 million bythe end of 2000, the United Nations said yesterday in a report to mark WorldAIDS Day. The soaring number of AIDS deaths could eventually undermine the politicalstability of affected countries, said Dr. Peter Piot, the head of the U.N.program on AIDS. All but 5 percent of the world's children orphaned by AIDS live insub-Saharan Africa, UNAIDS and UNICEF said in the report. In the past, age-oldnetworks of immediate and extended families would have assumed the care oforphans. But, the report said, 'the traditional African extended family isbreaking down under the unprecedented burden of the pandemic.'