Faculty Bibliography

''The public health community has not been very imaginative in promoting good reporting,'' said Dr. Michael B. Gregg, who recently retired as an official of the Centers for Disease Control. ''Reporting cases ought to be as much of a reflex as carrying a stethoscope, and the names of serious offenders should be made public.'' ''When we try harder to increase awareness,'' such as by talking to medical societies and issuing newsletters, ''we get almost complete reporting,'' Dr. [Gregory R. Istre] said. ''It happens all the time and the missed outbreaks are not documented that often,'' Dr. [Stephen B. Thacker] said in an interview. Incomplete reporting, he added, ''raises costs and slows things down because additional surveys are needed to validate our work.''

A new study in Africa by the World Health Organization has shown that a drug chewed as a wafer boosted the number of immune cells in a small number of AIDS patients whose immune cells had been damaged by the AIDS virus

A new study has uncovered a hereditary factor that greatly increases susceptibility to the chronic arthritis that can change Lyme disease from an almost unnoticeable ailment to an affliction lasting several years. Other Lyme desease research is detailed

''We want to be able to better map trends, get a better handle on what is really Lyme disease, and identify priorities for action,' said Dr. David T. Dennis, a Lyme disease epidemiologist at the Center for Disease Control's laboratory in Fort Collins, Colo. TESTS SCRUTINIZED For several reasons, Lyme blood tests are generally more dependable in the later stages of disease than the earlier stages. There may be delays in the formation and rise of Lyme antibodies. From preliminary studies, the CDC has selected seven Lyme tests now on the market for further study. The seven tests will be used on 150 blood samples from patients with varying stages of Lyme disease, syphilis and other infections from different areas of the country. Results are not expected until late fall. HEREDITARY FACTORS

It was also called ''viral'' pneumonia because an agent suspected of causing it could pass through filters designed to trap bacteria. Scientists presumed it was a small virus that they could not culture. Today pneumonia is known to be caused by many viruses, and mild cases are often called ''walking pneumonia.'' Not until the early 1960's was the microbe identified as Mycoplasma pneumoniae. Since then, studies have shown that M. pneumoniae cause up to 20 percent of human pneumonia. Hardest hit are families with school-age children and people living in closed quarters like those in the military and prisons. Mycoplasmas are microbial nudists lacking the cell walls that characterize bacteria, which contain sugar molecules; it is these molecules that trigger most immune reactions. Lack of a cell wall makes it easier for mycoplasmas to evade the body's immune defenses, said Dr. Joel B. Baseman, an expert at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Mycoplasmas need cholesterol for growth and their nutritional requirements are so complex that many scientists make up their own witches' brews to culture the microbe in the laboratory. Such brews have helped link mycoplasmas to a growing spectrum of conditions like infections of the genital and urinary systems, pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, spontaneous abortion and stillbirth. ''Few microbes have that degree of homing instinct, and it is worth finding out what is in the arteries in the brains and joints that does the damage,'' Dr. [Lewis Thomas] said. bullet Mycoplasmas are notorious for contaminating samples in other laboratory experiments. ''It is the worst pain in the neck,'' said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who heads the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md

Researchers who studied surgical procedures at San Francisco General Hospital reported that on average, one surgeon or operating room nurse every eight years will be infected with the AIDS virus on the job there

More people with AIDS, though living longer because of drugs to treat the disease, are now falling prey to several cancers and a bewildering array of secondary infections that most victims in the earlier stages of the epidemic did not live to get

Dr. [Jack Kevorkian] has written on the issue of physician-assisted death. In one article in Medicine and Law, an English language journal edited in Israel and published in West Germany, he proposed that suicide clinics be established. ''The acceptance of planned death,'' he wrote, ''implies the establishment of well-staffed and well-organized medical clinics ('obitoria') where terminally ill patients can opt for death under controlled circumstances of compassion and decorum.'' Dr. Kevorkian has also suggested that organs for transplant be retrieved from patients who commit suicide. He has called for such retrieval after prisoners are executed and he has proposed doing experiments on inmates on death row. Following Mrs. [Janet Adkins]'s death, Dr. Kevorkian lamented that the circumstances of her death made it impossible to retrieve any of her organs for transplant. ''You could have sliced her liver in half and saved two babies and her bone marrow could have been taken, her heart, two kidneys, two lungs, a pancreas,'' he said. ''It is a Catch-22 situation,'' said George Annas, an expert on health law at Boston University and a critic of Dr. Kevorkian's action. ''You want to hang on as long as you are competent, but after you're incompetent and life is not worth living, it's too late, you can't do it anymore.''

A vaccine developed by Genentech Inc prevented two injected monkeys from becoming infected with the AIDS virus, but experts are cautious about the experimental vaccine's possible use in humans. The vaccine is designed to stimulate the immune system to fight off the virus before it becomes infection

Dr. Daniel F. Hoth, who directs the division of AIDS at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., said French researchers had used a cocktail of different types of vaccines, each of which included a different component of the AIDS virus. The Genentech findings are 'a potentially very important step' toward the goal of developing an effective AIDS vaccine, Hoth said. He added, 'It's another brick in the wall we are building to show that an AIDS vaccine is feasible.' Many researchers favor a subunit vaccine for AIDS because it contains only a portion of the virus and thus is unable to cause disease. Vaccines made from the whole virus can cause disease if the virus is not killed in the preparation of the vaccine