Faculty Bibliography

Bolts of thunder and lightning struck. Wind gusts scattered grass pollen over a wide area. Many people immediately began wheezing and having difficulty breathing from asthmatic attacks. Emergency rooms were swamped with 10 times the usual number of asthmatics

Federal health officials reported a rare case last week of an individual with AIDS who persistently tested negative for the AIDS virus. The man, who lives in Utah, was a longtime blood plasma donor, but an investigation found no evidence that his plasma had infected anyone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its weekly report. The report comes at a time when the Food and Drug Administration is about to license a new test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, that differs substantially from the standard one that has been used to screen all blood donations since 1985. If the new test had been available earlier, it probably would have detected the man's HIV infection, said officials with the centers. In August the FDA recommended that blood banks supplement the standard test with the new test within 90 days of its licensing. The new test detects the p24 antigen, or protein, in HIV. The standard test detects antibodies that the immune system produces in response to HIV infection, and has been enormously successful in preventing transfusion-associated AIDS

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City has been fined $12,000, the maximum allowed by state law, in a case in which a surgeon operated on the wrong side of a patient's brain, officials of the State Health Department and the center said on Mar 8, 1996

In its weekly report on Mar 7, 1996, the CDC described a rare case of an individual with AIDS who persistently tested negative for HIV. The report comes at a time when the FDA is about to license a new HIV test that differs substantially from the standard one that has been used to screen blood donoations since 1985, and CDC officials say the new test would have detected the man's HIV infection

Scientists in California reported on Feb 29, 1996 that a virus that is believed to cause Kaposi's sarcoma, the most common cancer affecting gay men with AIDS, has been grown in the laboratory and photographed for the first time. The new research, which is being published in the March issue of the journal Nature Medicine, might lead to more effective therapies for Kaposi's sarcoma, which is often fatal, and to knowledge of how the virus is transmitted and the extent that the general population is infected

The findings significantly advance those that Columbia University researchers reported in December 1994, when they used a new technique to help detect molecular fragments from genes of what they believed was the Kaposi's sarcoma virus. The Columbia team did not actually identify the virus as the San Francisco team has done

The ideal vaccine would be safe, would produce no serious adverse reactions and would protect against chronic infection and disease after exposure to all HIV strains. An ideal vaccine would also eradicate AIDS, the way smallpox has been wiped out. Progress toward an ideal vaccine is likely to occur in incremental steps, says Dr. [Anthony S

Developing an AIDS vaccine is one of the greatest challenges in science. Since the first injections of an experimental AIDS vaccine were given in the United States in 1987, more than 2,000 uninfected adults have received about 20 experimental vaccines. Only a handful of AIDS vaccines have made it to the second of the three stages of the trials that are needed before any vaccine can be marketed. None has reached the third stage, full-scale testing. Canarypox virus harms canaries but is harmless for humans. The canarypox in the AIDS vaccine is a weakened form of canarypox virus that has been used to develop an experimental vaccine against rabies. But Government administrators and scientists involved in testing the canarypox vaccine were not able to answer several key questions about it. None could say what symptoms canarypox virus produces in birds, whether a canarypox vaccine is used anywhere to protect birds, and how effective it is. The ideal vaccine would be safe, would produce no serious adverse reactions and would protect against chronic infection and disease after exposure to all H.I.V. strains. An ideal vaccine would also eradicate AIDS, the way smallpox has been wiped out. Progress toward an ideal vaccine is likely to occur in incremental steps, Dr. Fauci said, adding that even 'a less than ideal AIDS vaccine could have a substantial public health impact.'

As part of an effort to help speed development of an AIDS vaccine and stop the worsening worldwide epidemic, federal health officials on Feb 12, 1996 released a blueprint for encouraging greater cooperation between industry and the government. A major aim of the plan is to overcome unfavorable market forces that are causing drug and biotechnology companies to lose interest in developing an HIV vaccine

A major aim of the plan is to overcome unfavorable market forces that are causing drug and biotechnology companies to lose interest in developing an H.I.V. vaccine. The number of companies involved in developing an AIDS vaccine has declined in recent years, in part because industry leaders believe that Government officials have tended to arbitrarily change their minds in deciding whether to move vaccine experiments from one stage of testing to the next. A vaccine must pass through three stages of testing before it can be licensed. More than 20 experimental H.I.V. vaccines have been injected into about 2,000 volunteers. But no vaccine has reached the third stage, only a few have reached the second one and it will be years before the first AIDS vaccine is licensed, Dr. Fauci and other scientists said. Patsy Fleming, the director of national AIDS policy, noted that development of an AIDS vaccine was controversial. Some scientists favor the empiricist approach of forging ahead with anything hinting at potential merit, she said, while others favor the basic research approach that emphasizes gaining a full scientific understanding before testing a vaccine in humans.