Faculty Bibliography

Dr. [Otis R. Bowen] said that the chief aim of the survey would be ''to find out the total extent of the AIDS problem'' and ''the distribution of the virus.'' Government officials have estimated that 1.5 million Americans are infected with the AIDS virus. Need for Survey Explained Dr. [June Osborn] contrasted the mood of this meeting with that of the ''gloom that was hard to dispel despite the numerous signal advances reported'' at last year's meeting in Paris and the ''shock at the emerging magnitude'' of the AIDS problem expressed at the first meeting in Atlanta in 1985, when about 2,000 scientists and public health workers attended. Dr. Bowen also drew cheers today when he said AIDS ''is not a them-and-us thing.'' He said, ''This is truly just an us thing.''

WASHINGTON - The federal government announced Friday that it would take random blood samples from about 45,000 people around the country as part of a national survey to determine the number of Americans infected with the AIDS virus. Participation is to be voluntary and anonymous. Dr. Otis R. Bowen, the secretary of Health and Human Services, told participants at a conference on AIDS that the government also planned to begin a campaign to educate the public about ways to prevent acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Bowen, who spoke at the end of the Third International Conference on AIDS, ignored the demonstrators until he had finished his prepared speech. Then, to applause, he added: ``I really don't object to your protesting my remarks. ... I shall not turn my back on the problem. I shall not turn my back on AIDS or the people who have it. We're going to see it through to the ultimate success, with the proper protection of civil rights and human dignity.``

Dr. B. Frank Polk, an AIDS epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, said in an interview here that ''a number of scientific leaders in AIDS have overstated the risk in the absence of data.'' Dr. [Harold W. Jaffe] said, ''Those who are suggesting that we are going to see an explosive spread of the virus into the heterosexual population have to explain why this is not happening.'' Dr. Jaffe said Federal health officials ''have not looked for such clusters.'' Rather, he said, that in the absence of national surveys, they have assessed the spread of the AIDS virus among heterosexual Americans from two lines of research

Although much more effort is being devoted to the problem of drug abuse than was the case a few years ago, ''we still need to be doing 10 times more than we are doing,'' Dr. Des Jarlais said. Proposals to Curb AIDS * Those who decline to stop using intravenous drugs would be advised how to give themselves ''AIDS-safe injections'' and how to avoid sexual behavior that puts them at risk of spreading the virus. Intravenous drug users are the second largest group of AIDS victims in United States. Seventeen percent of the more than 36,000 cases in this country have involved heterosexual intravenous drug users. Eight percent of American AIDS victims are homosexual or bisexual men who have also used intravenous drugs. People who are black or of Hispanic origin have been disproportionately afflicted by drug-related AIDS. The percentage of intravenous drug users has remained steady as the case count has risen in recent years

''We are witnessing a rising wave of stigmatization: against Westerners in Asia, against Africans in Europe, of homosexuals, of prostitutes, of hemophiliacs, of recipients of blood transfusions,'' the official, Dr. Jonathan Mann, told the Third International Conference on AIDS. He said fears of AIDS had become ''a direct threat to free travel between countries'' and to international exchange and communication. Dr. S. I. Okware, who heads the AIDS control program in Uganda, called on the world to help Africa ''catch up with'' the virus that causes AIDS. A special concern, Dr. [James Curran] said, is the danger of a major increase in AIDS among babies born to women who carry the AIDS virus. Although ''the United States is relatively spared the pediatric AIDS epidemic compared to Africa,'' Dr. Curran said, the potential for more pediatric cases to develop in this country has ''alarming implications.''

The new retrovirus does not pose any unknown danger and is ''no reason for panic'' about a new AIDS epidemic, Dr. [Robert C. Gallo] told the more than 6,300 scientists and health workers at the Third International Conference on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The Nigerian virus was found chiefly because the discovery of the AIDS virus drove his team to look for others. He said: ''I bet we don't find it anywhere'' outside of Nigeria. 'In and Out of Man' With respect to the AIDS viruses, Dr. Gallo said his ''guess was that they had infected primates and other animals for milennia'' and that many had ''gone in and out of man.'' He explained that often the retrovirus infected a small number of people, probably in rural areas, but not enough to sustain a chain of human infection for any substantial period of time. Those who were infected by such retroviruses may have died of the infection without spreading it to others or died of some unrelated cause, Dr. Gallo said

''It is not just a political issue,'' Mr. [Eric D. K. Melby] said, noting worry also about ''the costs of caring for'' victims of the disease. He said the national leaders were concerned that money spent on treating AIDS patients was ''a significant drain or competing source for scarce funds in developing countries.'' Dr. Jonathan Mann, who heads the World Health Organization's AIDS program, said that ''if the progression of the disease isn't stopped soon'' in some African countries, AIDS could have dire economic and political consequences in the next few years. Dr. Mann stressed, ''That is not the stage where we are at now.'' Need for More Data 'Critical' ''It's such a critical issue,'' Dr. Mann said. ''If you don't know how many people are being infected you cannot know whether your program is having any impact and whether the investment is good or not.''

The idea of co-factors in the development of AIDS-related diseases has been greatly stimulated by an epidemiological observation about a cancer of the skin and blood vessels called Kaposi's sarcoma. Hitherto rare and tending to strike older men, Kaposi's sarcoma now occurs frequently among homosexual men with AIDS, while it is relatively uncommon among patients who became infected through intravenous drug use or contaminated blood transfusions. Earlier this month British scientists reported finding the first evidence that genetic differences make some people more susceptible than others to infection with the AIDS virus or, when infected, to development of disease. Dr. Anthony J. Pinching and his team in London found that people with one inherited form of a protein called group specific component appeared to be less vulnerable to the AIDS virus and that people with a second variant of the protein are highly susceptible to the virus. Proof that some co-factors exist for AIDS will not necessarily tell people infected with the AIDS virus what they most want to know: how to avoid developing the disease. Still, in the absence of a cure, such knowledge could be useful. If the presence of other infections facilitates the spread of the AIDS virus, for example, then AIDS virus carriers would do well to avoid any behavior that might expose them to those microbes

Now, for example, researchers can identify the genetic make-up of a virus, remove parts and then rearrange them to try to compare the virulence of the new strain to that of others. Scientists have used this technique of genetic engineering to try to unravel the mysteries of the influenza virus. Scientists actually have had more success in showing the reverse phenomenom of virulence - that some strains of viruses mutate to become weak enough not to cause disease, yet are potent enough to stimulate the body's immune system. This phenomenon, called attenuation, is what scientists use to make the vaccines that protect against polio, yellow fever, measles, and German measles. The attenuated polio virus used in polio vaccines, for example, still infects and multiplies within the human, but does not attack the spinal nerve cells to cause paralysis. Scientists are comparing the strains of the polio vaccine virus with those that produce the paralyzing disease to analyze the molecular differences. Researchers are using similar methods to analyze the AIDS virus

Because his heart was healthy and he and his doctors did not want to waste it, the organ was transplanted into a third person, 38-year-old John Couch of Yardley, Pa. Surgeons attached the heart ''piggy-back'' to Mr. Couch's ailing heart. He had been waiting for a transplant since last fall, according to Dr. William A. Baumgartner, who directs the heart-lung transplant program at Johns Hopkins. ''The recipient will be able to speak to his donor, and if they do well that will be great,'' Dr. [John Wallwork] said. ''If they do badly - just supposing the heart-lung recipient lives and the person who he gave his heart to dies - how is he going to feel? That is one of the reasons I haven't done it, the hidden emotion in it.'' Dr. [Joel Cooper] said the cystic fibrosis patient ''could have kept his own heart'' with the experimental lungs-only transplant technique that his team has used in three patients since last November. All are doing well, Dr. Cooper said, adding that ''if current trends continue'' doctors may be able to avoid the extra risk of rejection he said the cystic fibrosis patient faces because he received a new heart as well as new lungs