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- THE WEEK, Page 28HEALTH & SCIENCETroubling Dispatches From the AIDS Front
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- Will women soon outnumber men as victims? Is a new virus at
- work?
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- The Eighth International Conference on AIDS was originally
- scheduled to be held in Boston. But the organizers, angered by
- a U.S. policy prohibiting entry by people infected with HIV, the
- AIDS virus, moved it. So it was that more than 11,000
- scientists, policymakers and activists trooped to Amsterdam
- instead to exchange the latest information:
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- -- Doctors reported more than two dozen cases of AIDS-like
- symptoms in patients who test negative for HIV. The cause is
- unknown: it could be a new version of HIV (two are already
- known) or an evolved form of an existing one. It could be a
- completely different sort of virus. It could even be some sort
- of bacterium, or perhaps an environmental factor. Scientists
- believe they have already isolated a new virus in patients with
- this mock AIDS, but their work needs to be confirmed. Such a
- virus could contaminate blood supplies undetected, but because
- scientists could develop new blood tests quickly, the danger is
- minimal.
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- -- Experimental vaccines designed to slow or stop the
- progress of AIDS in infected people are showing promise in
- several trials. But vaccines to prevent the disease in healthy
- people are much farther off.
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- -- The AIDS epidemic is at least partly to blame for a new
- strain of tuberculosis that is extremely resistant to
- antibiotics; the diseases seem to progress much faster in
- patients who have both at the same time. Unlike AIDS,
- tuberculosis is highly contagious.
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- -- Women are now catching AIDS almost as fast as men, and
- by the year 2000 they will make up the majority of victims. One
- reason: in many societies, women have no influence on their
- husbands' sexual behavior and cannot force them to wear
- condoms.
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