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The Food and Drug Administration has given approval to a Bay area company 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

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 either not detected or misdiagnosed. In 54 of the 100 patients, the cancer had spread. In 57 of the patients, the cancer was the most probable cause of death, the authors reported yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Long known as Charity Hospital, the Medical Center of Louisiana serves a mainly indigent population, which may not be receiving adequate health care. The hospital is also a top-level trauma center. Thus, cancers and other chronic conditions could have been masked by other more acute problems, Dr. Elizabeth C. Burton and her co-authors wrote. One in five of the deceased, who were age 4 to 92 years, had cancers at the time of autopsy. But the report did not address the extent of medical care they received in life

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

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

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

Little can rival the misery of a medical researcher who discovers that a co-author has committed scientific misconduct. One who feels that most keenly is Dr. Cameron Bowie, emeritus director of public health in Somerset, England. Last week, Bowie retracted a published paper that had been influential in developing health policy on community care in England and that was incorporated in national testing of public health doctors. The paper, on the need for and cost-effectiveness of community-based care for the disabled, had won acclaim for Bowie and his co-author, Dr. Mark H. Williams. Fellow researchers had called it a fundamental report. Bowie had trumpeted the findings with gusto until British officials found that Williams had committed scientific misconduct, including falsifying statistics in another research paper. Williams, a trusted friend, had put Bowie's scientific credentials into question, and in an interview last week, Bowie said his 'reaction was one of disbelief that it could have happened.'

The scourge of AIDS now rivals the greatest epidemics of history, particularly in areas of Africa where as many as one in four adults is infected with HIV, according to a U.N. report on Tuesday. In the first country-by-country analysis of the disease, the United Nations said 30 million people worldwide last year were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and 21 million of them were in Africa. Countries south of the Sahara account for the world's 21 highest rates of HIV among adults ages 15 to 49, the most sexually active segment of the population. In 13 of those countries, HIV has infected at least 10 percent of adults, and in Botswana and Zimbabwe, a quarter of adults are infected, a rate that even an expert described as 'shocking.'

Surgeons in France announced yesterday they had attached the right hand and forearm of an anonymous donor to the arm of a 48-year-old Australian man whose own hand was amputated after a logging accident in 1989. Theirs was not the first such transplant attempt; at least one previous attempt, in Ecuador in 1964, ended in failure after two weeks when the donor hand was rejected by the body. Although no such transplant is believed to have ever been successful, the team in France said advances in drugs and microsurgery since the attempt in Ecuador gave the procedure a 50 percent chance of turning out well

GENEVA - In certain areas of Africa, one in four adults is infected with the virus that causes AIDS, and around the world the disease now rivals the greatest epidemics of history, according to a U.N. report issued Tuesday. In the first country-by-country analysis of the disease, the United Nations said that last year 30 million people worldwide were infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, and that 21 million were in Africa. Countries south of the Sahara account for the world's 21 highest rates of HIV among adults aged 15 to 49 years, the most sexually active segment of the population. In 13 of those countries, HIV has infected at least 10 percent of adults, and in Botswana and Zimbabwe, a quarter of adults are infected, a rate that even an expert described as 'shocking.'