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Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Laboratory in Manhattan, which first identified the possible new strain, said: 'I think we have a unique convergence of a very drug- resistant virus, and this infection was very, very rapid. And this man has many, many sexual partners.' Some scientists and gay rights advocates have criticized the disclosure as premature and unnecessarily alarmist. There is little doubt that the HIV strain was resistant to drugs used to combat the AIDS virus

In a special symposium arranged to deal with the issues raised by the New York case, Dr. [David Ho] presented his case to thousands of the world's top AIDS experts at the Hynes Convention Center. He said it was unique not only among all those the Aaron Diamond Center had ever seen, but also among all the cases cataloged in the laboratory at Los Alamos, which collects data of the gene sequences and other molecular biology information of H.I.V. isolates from around the country. Scientists can test for a number of genetic markers that indicate whether a patient is unusually susceptible to such a quick progression. Dr. Ho's team reported that it had found none of the key indicators that usually signal rapid progression of the virus. Dr. Ho said they had several more tests yet to run. But even when all the tests are complete, he said, there will still be room for doubt. ''The scientific community simply doesn't know enough about genetic markers for disease progression,'' Dr. Ho said in an interview before the presentation. ''There could be other markers that we cannot look at, so we can never exclude genetics, because the knowledge is incomplete.'' The patient is a 46-year-old gay man who tested positive for H.I.V. in December. Another test showed that the man had antibodies to H.I.V., indicating that he had been infected for more than three months, but less than 20, Dr. Ho said

Health officials around the world have pointed to Uganda's success in reducing the prevalence of infections with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in recent years. Uganda's President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the [BUSH] administration and some public health experts have credited the decline largely to a policy known as ABC -- for abstinence, be faithful (monogamy) and condom use. The findings apply strictly to Rakai and cannot be extrapolated to other areas of Uganda for many reasons, [Maria J. Wawer] and a co-author, Dr. Ronald Gray of Johns Hopkins, who is also her husband, said in interviews with reporters. One reason is that the age of first sexual intercourse varies in different areas of Uganda. [Chris Beyrer], Wawer and Gray said there now is a condom shortage in Uganda because officials have found defects in condoms imported from a country they did not identify. The Ugandan government has stopped distribution of condoms imported from that country and is testing all foreign-made condoms, including those made in the United States, they said, adding that the price of condoms in Uganda has risen

Health officials around the world have pointed to Uganda's success in reducing the prevalence of infections with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, in recent years. President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda, the [Bush] administration and some public health experts have credited the decline largely to a policy known as ABC, for abstinence, be faithful (monogamy) and condom use. The findings apply strictly to Rakai and cannot be extrapolated to other areas of Uganda for many reasons, Dr. [Maria J. Wawer] and a co-author, Dr. Ronald Gray of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who is also her husband, said in interviews with reporters. One reason is that the age of first sexual intercourse varies in different areas of Uganda. Dr. [Chris Beyrer], Dr. Wawer and Dr. Gray said there was now a condom shortage in Uganda because officials had found defects in condoms imported from a country that they did not identify. The Ugandan government has stopped distribution of that country's condoms and is testing all foreign-made condoms, including those made in the United States, they said, adding that the price of condoms in Uganda has risen

Charles King, the president of Housing Works, an AIDS support group, said the announcement could be used to demonize the gay lifestyle and accused Dr. [Thomas R. Frieden] of having wanted to change regulations regarding H.I.V. testing for a long time. The Community H.I.V./AIDS Mobilization Project, based in New York, said the link between the spread of the possible new strain and the use of crystal methamphetamine was unproven, and suggested that the city had ignored the ''underlying issues'' behind the spread of the virus, like discrimination, poor housing and unemployment. Dr. Ho, then a relatively unknown 37-year-old researcher fresh from Harvard and U.C.L.A., was hired to run the center in 1989 and immediately attracted attention. With more money at his disposal than most other research institutions, Dr. Ho became the object of envy as top-flight scientists lined up to join his center. Within a few years, Dr. Ho's team won international publicity, challenging long-held theories about AIDS and reporting new evidence about the way the AIDS virus works in the body. After Dr. Frieden disclosed the case, reports of similar cases quickly emerged, some of which had been published earlier. For example, Dr. Julio Montaner, a professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, reported in 2003 in the scientific journal AIDS that two men with a highly drug-resistant strain of H.I.V. might have progressed rapidly to AIDS. Dr. Ho did not contact Dr. Montaner about the case until three days after Dr. Frieden's news conference

Dr. Guthrie S. Birkhead, director of the New York State Health Department's AIDS Institute, said he discussed the measure with Dr. [Thomas R. Frieden] and was open to considering changing state law. However, Dr. Birkhead and Dr. Frieden said they recognized that because laboratories do not use a standard format to report test results, collecting the data could prove extremely difficult. Immediately after the rare H.I.V. strain was reported to the department, Dr. Frieden said he asked the dozen or so laboratories licensed by the state to check their records for any other patients with the same strain of the virus. While proposals to restructure the AIDS bureau have been in the planning stages for months, they gained added urgency after the city announced last week that a strain of H.I.V. had been found that showed resistance to multiple drugs and possibly led to the rapid onset of AIDS in a New York City man, perhaps in as few as two months

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, faced that conundrum last Friday. At a news conference, Dr. Frieden announced that a New York City man in his mid-40's had the first diagnosed strain of H.I.V. that showed both resistance to multiple classes of antiretroviral drugs and a rapid progression from infection to AIDS. Doctors have in the past reported each of these components separately, but not in combination. He said that AIDS and H.I.V. had been viewed as a cause by advocacy groups and as a scientific challenge by researchers, and that that was appropriate. ''But we really have not applied the principles of epidemic control to H.I.V./AIDS to a remarkably great extent because of the population and the political context in which it arose,'' Dr. Frieden said. In alerting medical workers, Dr. Frieden said his hope was that more infected people would be found in the early stages of H.I.V. infection. It is at that time when the risk of transmission of the virus is extremely great because there are large amounts of H.I.V. in the blood. Also, Dr. Frieden said, most people change their risk behavior upon learning that they are infected

AIDS viruses isolated from two people are being studied to determine whether either might be the source of a rare and potentially more aggressive form of H.I.V. detected in a New York City man, an AIDS scientist involved in the studies said yesterday. Laboratory tests in Dr. [David Ho]'s laboratory and elsewhere have shown that the strain from the man whose case started the investigation is resistant to 19 of the 20 licensed anti-retroviral drugs. AIDS experts said that the strain might have led to the rapid onset of AIDS in the man or that his immune defenses might have been weakened by drug use or genetics. On Friday, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the man's case was the first in which a strain of H.I.V. had been found that showed both resistance to multiple classes of drugs and apparently led to a rapid progression from infection to AIDS. Each component has been reported earlier

Tests in [David Ho]'s laboratory and elsewhere have shown that the rare strain from the man whose case started the investigation is resistant to 19 of the 20 licensed anti-retroviral drugs. AIDS experts said that the strain may have led to the rapid onset of AIDS in the man or that his immune defenses may have been weakened by drug use or genetic factors

The city health officials said they had detected the rare strain of HIV in one man whose case they described as particularly worrisome because it merged two unusual features: resistance to nearly all antiretroviral drugs used to treat the infection, and stunningly swift progression from infection to full-fledged AIDS. That combination, the officials said, could signal a new, more menacing kind of infection, and its discovery set in motion an anxious search by city workers to find the man's sexual partners and have them tested. Project Inform, a 20-year-old group in San Francisco providing information about AIDS and treatment, called the reports 'unnecessarily alarming to the public.' What is not clear yet, several experts said, is whether the disease progressed so rapidly because the virus was strong or the patient was weak. About 1 percent of all people infected are 'slow progressors,' who take decades to get sick. The reasons are unknown, but some have genetic mutations that disable the receptors on the outside of the CD-4 immune system cells to which the virus attaches