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The AIDS epidemic galloping through much of the world could be curtailed if known preventions were more widely applied and if an additional $1.5 billion to $2.9 billion a year were spent in developing countries on AIDS prevention, a World Health Organization official said Monday in Berlin at the ninth international AIDS meeting. The greater efforts would 'save millions of lives, billions of dollars and immeasurable pain and suffering,' [Michael H. Merson] said. By the year 2000 it would be possible to cut in half the number of people who otherwise would be infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, he said. Americans show improved knowledge about AIDS as well as increased personal acquaintance with victims of AIDS, and half of all adults now say they have acted to avoid getting AIDS themselves, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll

The ninth international AIDS conference, which began in Berlin on Jun 6, 1993, is looking for a breakthrough, but it is more likely that the 12,000 participants will come up with no solutions. Even though scientists have learned much in a decade of intensive research, there have been few clinical benefits

For three years, medical sleuths have been trying to figure out how Dr. David J. Acer, a Florida dentist, infected six of his patients with the AIDS virus. But they are stumped, and the case has become one of the most disturbing unsolved mysteries in the annals of medicine. A possible motive was suggested by Edward Parsons, a nurse who was a friend of Acer's. He told the Palm Beach Post last year that Acer had said to him in 1988 that mainstream America was ignoring AIDS because it affected mostly homosexuals like himself, hemophiliacs and drug addicts. Moreover, no infected patient or office worker recalled Acer hurting himself that way, and no one suggested that he suffered AIDS-induced dementia that would have led him to ignore injuries

Success in overhauling the health-care system will depend in large part on the cooperation of doctors. The resurgent popularity of a career in medicine augurs well for the major overhaul that the [Clinton] administration is expected to propose, because many applicants said they were optimistic that the good of the reforms to society would outweigh any hardships for them. Yet the applicants also expressed reservations that if there are serious erosions of the patient-doctor relationship and professional autonomy, future applicants would begin to look elsewhere, and the popularity of medicine could sink in a very short time. The average medical school applicant applies to 11 medical schools. There are 2.6 applicants for every one place, which approaches the record high ratio of 2.8-to-1 in the mid-1970s. The ratio jumps to 70-to-1 for a place at a small, selective school such as the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minn. At the three schools with the highest number of applications - Georgetown and George Washington universities in Washington or Chicago Medical School - where applications this year exceed 10,000 each, the ratio is almost as high

Scientists sent to Cuba to investigate an epidemic of a disease that impairs vision and damages nerves say they are baffled about its cause and the reason the number of cases has risen to 34,000 from nearly 26,000 a month ago. Although some experts in the United States had said the epidemic appeared to have been caused by a vitamin deficiency, laboratory tests have not established any environmental, genetic, nutritional, infectious or toxicological cause for the epidemic, the Pan American Health Organization said in a statement last week. The international scientists and Cuban doctors agree that there is an epidemic, [Paul Brown] said. But its size and scope are uncertain, in part because it has been difficult to sort through the eye and nervous system problems that Cuban doctors have been treating to determine which are truly part of the epidemic and which are due to other serious disorders

Scientists studying an epidemic in Cuba that impairs vision and damages nerves have not been able to determine its cause. The number of cases has risen to 34,000 from nearly 26,000 a month earlier

NEW YORK - In an advance along the demanding road to development of an AIDS vaccine, researchers have shown that a vaccine derived from an AIDS-like monkey virus can prevent vaginal infection in the animals, as might occur in human heterosexual sex. In the new study, scientists used new technology and strategy to immunize monkeys against the simian immunodeficiency virus, the AIDS-like virus in monkeys. They found that a vaccine consisting of chemically killed virus, followed by a booster, prevented transmission of the simian virus when it was introduced into the animals' vaginas

In an advance along the long, difficult road to the development of an AIDS vaccine, researchers have shown that a vaccine derived from an AIDS-like monkey virus can prevent an infection in the animals similar to what can be caused by human heterosexual sex. 'The idea with this vaccine is to neutralize the virus at the point of contact,' said the study's senior author, Dr. Preston Marx of the New Mexico Regional Primate Research Laboratory. 'Our feeling is that once the virus enters the bloodstream that the vaccine will be far less effective.' The new inoculations used a time-release vaccine delivered by microscopic beads. Scientists found that a vaccine consisting of chemically killed simian immunodeficiency virus, the AIDS-like virus in monkeys, followed by a booster, protected against vaginal exposure to the simian virus

Researchers have shown that a vaccine derived from an AIDS-like monkey virus can prevent vaginal infection in the animals, as might occur in human heterosexual sex, but say a human AIDS vaccine is far from being developed

In an advance along the demanding road to development of an AIDS vaccine, researchers have shown that a vaccine derived from an AIDS-like monkey virus can prevent vaginal infection in the animals, as might occur in human heterosexual sex. In the new study, scientists from New Mexico, Alabama and Georgia used new technology and strategy to immunize monkeys against the simian immunodeficiency virus, the AIDS-like virus in monkeys. They found that a vaccine consisting of chemically killed virus, followed by a booster, prevented transmission of the simian virus when it was introduced into the animals' vaginas