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GENEVA - At the 12th World AIDS Conference, some scientists expressed cautious but renewed hope Tuesday of ultimately eliminating the HIV virus from the body and thus curing AIDS. 'Cure of HIV infection is not a myth; it is a problem we can tackle,' said Dr. Roberto Siliciano of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Two years ago, Dr. David Ho and his team from the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York City first discussed the possibility of eradicating HIV. At the World AIDS Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, they announced an experiment of purposely asking a patient to stop the medication to determine whether HIV returned

Today the best that doctors can offer are combinations of drugs known as cocktails that can drive the amount of virus in a person's blood below levels detectable in laboratory tests. But that does not mean the virus has been eliminated from the body. Scientists have recently discovered that although the virus could not be detected in the blood, it was still hiding in certain cells to produce what is known as a latent reservoir of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Two years ago, Dr. David Ho and his team from the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York City first discussed the possibility of eradicating H.I.V. At the World AIDS Conference in Vancouver in 1996, they announced an experiment of purposely asking a patient to stop the medication to determine whether H.I.V. returned. Today, Dr. Ho, Dr. (Roberto) Siliciano and others said they had gone back to the drawing board to map new strategies to eliminate the latent reservoir. In pursuing that goal, scientists are moving into uncharted waters. Although vaccines can prevent viral infections, drugs do not cure any viral disease the way antibiotics can cure some bacterial infections

Tuesday, [David Ho], [Roberto Siliciano] and others said that they have gone back to the drawing board to map new strategies to eliminate the latent reservoir. In pursuing that goal, scientists are moving into uncharted waters. Although vaccines can prevent viral infections, drugs do not cure any viral disease the way antibiotics can cure some bacterial infections. When a person gets over a viral infection, recovery is due to the body's natural immune defenses. In the case of HIV, one strategy is to find new drugs to rid the body of the last cell of the reservoir. Another is to use one drug to flush HIV out of hiding so that another drug might kill the escaping virus. Normally, young uninfected CD4 cells emerge from the thymus gland in the chest and circulate throughout the body in its lymph system. When such cells meet a foreign invader like HIV, they turn into a different cell (known as a lymphoblast) and begin to proliferate. HIV kills many CD4 cells. But some survive in a resting state in which HIV does not replicate unless something stimulates it to do so

In a new effort to slow the transmission of AIDS from mothers to their babies, the United Nations is starting a pilot program to treat 30,000 pregnant women infected with H.I.V. in 11 countries where the infection is spreading rapidly, United Nations officials said at the 12th World AIDS Conference here today. The program, which will focus on developing nations, mainly in Africa, will offer testing to pregnant women and short-term therapy with the drug AZT during late pregnancy and delivery. Several studies have shown that short-term AZT therapy can sharply reduce the risk of a woman's transmitting H.I.V. to her baby. Each year an estimated two million H.I.V.-infected women worldwide become pregnant, officials of the United Nations AIDS program said. About 680,000 babies were born with AIDS last year, thrusting mother-to-child transmission to center stage at the conference. But as the United Nations program was announced at a news conference, Actup-Paris, a French advocacy group, strongly attacked it as unethical. Protesters argued that the program was far too limited, because it will provide treatment to women only during pregnancy and not afterward. They also criticized organizers for not addressing the fate of the children who will be born free of H.I.V. but whose mothers may soon die of AIDS. About 1.6 million children worldwide lost their mothers to the disease in 1997

Pleas for national leaders to muster the political courage to carry out strong prevention programs to stop the global epidemic of AIDS were sounded at the opening of the 12th World AIDS Conference on Sunday. The world is facing a runaway epidemic and 'it is time to embrace a new realism and a new urgency in our efforts' to overcome complacency about the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, Dr. Peter Piot, the head of the United Nations AIDS program, said at the conference

Pleas for national leaders to muster the political courage to carry out strong prevention programs to stop the global epidemic of AIDS were sounded at the opening of the 12th World AIDS Conference here today. Saying that the world is facing a ''runaway epidemic'' of AIDS, Dr. Peter Piot, the head of the United Nations AIDS program, told the conference that ''it is time to embrace a new realism and a new urgency in our efforts'' to overcome complacency about human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. The condom for women, speakers said, was giving women more choice in protecting themselves against H.I.V. More than 18 million such condoms have been sold since 1992. The United Nations has negotiated a program in which four million condoms for women were sold in developing countries last year at a cost of 50 to 90 cents, compared with $2 to $3 in the United States

A new study has found a substantial discrepancy between the number of cancers detected during life and those found in autopsies. Despite advances in medical technology, the disparity between the diagnosis of cancer before and after death was 44 percent, similar to that found in studies conducted in earlier decades, said the authors. The study, which involved 1,105 autopsies performed over the 10- year period from 1986 to 1995 at the Medical Center of Louisiana in New Orleans, found that 100 patients had developed 111 cancers that doctors had not detected or misdiagnosed

The Food and Drug Administration has given a California company approval to conduct the world's first full-scale test of a vaccine to prevent infection with the virus that causes AIDS, the company announced Wednesday. The announcement brought expressions of cautious hope among health officials and advocates for people with AIDS. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has infected an estimated 30 million people in the world, and many experts say it will take a vaccine to stop the worsening epidemic. Scientists are divided over which experimental vaccines to approve for full-scale testing and when to do so. No vaccine is 100 percent effective. Some experts favor testing any promising vaccine, even if it is likely to protect only a small proportion of recipients, saying that something is better than nothing in a health emergency

The Food and Drug Administration has given a California company approval to conduct the world's first full-scale test of a vaccine to prevent infection with the AIDS virus, the company announced Wednesday. The announcement brought expressions of cautious hope among health officials and advocates for people with AIDS. HIV, the AIDS virus, has infected an estimated 30 million people in the world, and many experts say it will take a vaccine to stop the worsening epidemic. But scientists are sharply divided over when and which experimental vaccines to approve for full-scale testing. No vaccine is 100 percent effective. Some experts favor testing any promising vaccine, even if it is likely to protect only a small proportion of recipients, arguing that something is better than nothing in a health emergency