Faculty Bibliography

In an advance that promises to significantly reduce the incidence of AIDS among children in developing countries, American and Ugandan scientists have found a simple new way to help prevent mother-to- child transmission of the AIDS virus that is less costly and markedly more effective than the standard therapy in the Third World. The new and more practical therapy comes from substituting one marketed drug, nevirapine, for the standard drug, AZT. The total cost for the two doses of nevirapine was $4, compared with $268 for the AZT regimen now used in developing countries and $815 for the much longer and more complicated course used in the United States and other developed countries, federal health officials said in releasing the findings yesterday. Nevirapine has been marketed since 1996 in the United States for treatment of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and it was remarkably safe in the study by American and Ugandan researchers

A turning point came on April 22 when the United States -- one of two official smallpox repositories around the globe, along with Russia -- announced that it would delay its intended destruction of the virus, reversing years of planning and Washington's previous stance. Most visibly, top scientists and health experts are now calling for a federal program to produce new vaccine to protect up to 100 million people in the United States -- enough, in theory, to stop any epidemic in its tracks. More quietly, American and Russian scientists hope to embark on studies to better understand the killer's ways in an effort to perfect a cure. And most stealthily of all, intelligence agencies are stepping up their efforts to better judge the threat of smallpox attacks. [Edward] Jenner dreamed of eliminating smallpox. But no serious efforts were made until the 20th century. As late as the 1930s, smallpox struck up to 50,000 people each year in the United States. The last case occurred in 1949 in Hidalgo County, Texas. Although Jenner had used cowpox virus, a third virus, vaccinia, became the standard vaccine against smallpox. Experts say vaccinia is related to the smallpox and cowpox viruses, but its origin is a major scientific mystery

In his life, [Albert Einstein] had submitted to brain studies and at least one biography says he hoped his brain would be studied after his death. When Einstein died in 1955, in Princeton, N.J., a pathologist who performed the autopsy removed the brain and kept it when he left Princeton. According to several journalistic accounts, the pathologist, Dr. Thomas Harvey, kept Einstein's brain in a jar and at one time it sat in a cardboard box that once held apple cider behind a beer cooler in his office in Kansas. [Sandra Witelson] began examining the photographs and measurements that Harvey had made of Einstein's brain from a number of different angles. Harvey also brought to Witelson's laboratory about 50 pieces, or a fifth of Einstein's brain, so she could also study them through a microscope. Because Einstein's brain was being compared with those of people who died at age 60 on average, and Einstein was 76 when he died, the scientists also compared his brain to the eight oldest members of the study. Their age averaged 70. Beyond the anomalies in Einstein's parietal lobe, there was no significant difference

Scientists reported yesterday that they had cured diabetes in monkeys by giving them transplants of insulin-producing cells along with an experimental drug that prevented rejection of the donor tissue. The findings are an important advance in diabetes research, ''strikingly different'' from all previously tested strategies, and a step toward the ultimate goal of curing diabetes in humans, the scientists said. Their findings involving the experimental drug known as anti-CD154 are to be reported this year in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which made the paper available ahead of publication. The islet cells, which were transplanted into the monkeys, are the parts of the pancreas gland that produce insulin to control blood sugar. Islet-cell transplants have been carried out in more than 300 people in recent years but with limited success, Dr. (Camillo) Ricordi said. After a year, the graft has functioned in fewer than 35 percent of such patients and fewer than 10 percent have been able to stop taking insulin. Thousands more people have received transplants of the entire pancreas gland, located deep in the abdomen

Prompted by fears of a new outbreak of one the world's deadliest scourges, a World Health Organization panel in Geneva decided today to postpone eradicating the world's known remaining stocks of the smallpox virus until at least 2002. Virtually all member nations said they remained committed to the elimination of the smallpox stocks as soon as possible. But the recommendation to the World Health Assembly, the organization's governing body, reflected widespread agreement that more time is needed to study smallpox before it is irrevocably destroyed. Though smallpox was officially declared eradicated as a disease in 1980, most officials now acknowledge that there are probably clandestine stocks of smallpox virus throughout the world, and that retaining the virus could speed the development of new drugs to fight a possible outbreak, whether due to terrorism or other factors

Ms. Elion developed drugs for use in a vast array of conditions. They included drugs for herpes, leukemia, malaria, gout, immune disorders, and AIDS, and immune suppressants to overcome rejection of donated organs in transplant surgery. In perfecting one compound after another, Ms. Elion worked for four decades with Dr. George H. Hitchings, who died a year ago. Ms. Elion broke down sex barriers in the male-dominated world of scientific research, becoming one of the rare women to win a Nobel Prize and, even rarer, a scientist who did not have a doctorate. Ms. Elion shared the Prize with Dr. Hitchings, who hired her as a $50-a-week assistant in 1944. Also sharing the Prize was Sir James Black of Britain, who discovered two classes of drugs, beta blockers, for high blood pressure and heart disease, and H-2 antagonists, for ulcers

United Nations scientists reported Monday that a simple, relatively inexpensive drug treatment can significantly reduce mother-to-infant transmission of the AIDS virus. The results are not as good as those from the standard treatment in Western countries, where prospective mothers infected with the virus receive the drug AZT starting at about the 26th week of pregnancy, and their babies take it for the first six weeks of life

CHICAGO - The riddle of the origin of the AIDS virus has apparently been solved, according to an international team of scientists who reported Sunday having traced its roots to a related virus in a subspecies of chimpanzee in Africa. Because the chimpanzee is able to live with the virus without falling ill, the scientists expressed hope that their discovery eventually would help improve therapies and develop an effective vaccine against the AIDS virus. The researchers, who reported their findings at the opening session of a scientific meeting here, said the simian virus was closely related to HIV-1, the type of AIDS virus that has caused the overwhelming majority of cases in the world

The riddle of the origin of the AIDS virus apparently has been solved, according to an international team of scientists who reported yesterday that they had traced its roots to a related virus in a subspecies of chimpanzee in Africa. Because the chimpanzee is able to live with the virus without falling ill, the scientists expressed hope that their discovery would eventually help improve therapies and develop an effective vaccine against the AIDS virus. The researchers, who reported their findings at the opening session of a scientific meeting here, said the simian virus was closely related to HIV-1, the type of AIDS virus that has caused the overwhelming majority of cases in the world. Since the virus jumped to humans, perhaps through exposure to blood in hunting or handling the meat of chimpanzees, it has been transmitted among humans to infect an estimated 30 million people worldwide

In 1938, as a New York University/Bellevue Hospital intern, I recorded notes on the 384 cases I saw during my 1-month ambulance duty. Although I intended to use them to follow up the clinical course of patients I admitted to Bellevue, the long hours and pressure of work made this ambitious goal unachievable. Sixty years later, after retirement from academic medicine and medical practice at New York University School of Medicine, I found the long-lost notes among my papers. They are of historic interest since they provide insight into aspects of primary and emergency medicine of the era when the therapeutic efficacy of the sulfanilamide class of agents was under investigation, a unique view of the life of an intern just before interns were replaced on ambulances by technicians, and a glimpse of the surprising character of several neighborhoods of pre-World War II Manhattan. The notes also provide the basis for a current analysis of case incidence and treatment by disease category. A description of the confluence of social, economic, and political forces that led to the establishment of the Bellevue Hospital Ambulance Service, the first such urban service in the world, is included