Aids: Prejudice and Progress

By Joe Levine

When Ryan White of Kokomo, Ind., returned to school last winter, after being diagnosed with AIDS, he was greeted first by picketers and then a court order barring the young hemophiliac from the premises. But all was quiet last week when the 14-year-old walked through the doors of Western High School for the start of eighth-grade classes. "He's going to be a regular student like everyone else," said Principal Charles Wolf. True, Ryan's reinstatement resulted from another court order, and true, AIDS victims around the country still face formidable prejudices. But the calm in Indiana was one of several signs last week that knee-jerk fear of people with AIDS may be subsiding, at least in some parts of the population.

In the world of professional football, there was an outpouring of sympathy and support for Jerry Smith, 43, an All-Pro tight end with the Washington Redskins (1965-77), who on Tuesday became the first professional athlete to disclose publicly that he has AIDS. "I want people to know what I've been through, and how terrible this disease is," Smith told the Washington Post from his hospital bed in Silver Spring, Md. In Houston, officials proudly announced the opening of a private 150-bed hospital, the first devoted solely to AIDS patients. And in New York City, only mild rumblings greeted the news that six students with AIDS or AIDS-related diseases will start school on Sept. 8. "We accept that children with AIDS are going into our classrooms," said George Russo, president of a local school board that fought attendance by an AIDS-infected second-grader last year. Though his group is pressing the city to identify the six students to teachers, Russo says, "We've been educated to know what fears were unfounded and which should still be of concern."

Is the public really more accepting of AIDS? A study presented at a meeting of the American Psychological Association last week suggested that it depends -- mostly on familiarity with the disease. Researchers from the University of California at San Francisco interviewed 399 Londoners, New Yorkers and San Franciscans and found that the longer people were aware of AIDS, the more tolerant their attitudes were. Ignorance about the illness was linked to increased prejudice and fear. That point, too, has been demonstrated recently.

In a northeast Washington neighborhood last week, residents protested a plan by Mother Teresa and the Roman Catholic archdiocese to open a hospice in the area for AIDS patients. In Chicago, a charter-bus driver ejected 35 healthy members and friends of an AIDS fund-raising group last week, merely because of their connection with AIDS patients. "Here in Chicago, AIDS is still seen as a gay issue," one group member said. "I see a lot of hysteria." In California, a group calling itself PANIC (Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee) has placed a proposition on the November ballot giving health officials the right to quarantine all AIDS patients and carriers of the virus. Though unlikely to pass, it has stirred the most voter emotion.

The greatest fear of AIDS, of course, centers on questions about its transmission. On the medical front last week, researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris announced that traces of the AIDS virus have been found in the genes of more than 50 varieties of insects from Africa. The report's author, Jean-Claude Chermann, rushed to assure the public that insects almost certainly pose no threat to humans, but a trigger-happy French press jumped to its own conclusions. MOSQUITOES COULD TRANSMIT AIDS VIRUS, headlined France- Soir.

In fact, Chermann explained, "it takes quite a bit of the virus to engender AIDS" in humans, more than is found in insects. Experts reaffirmed that intimate sexual contact, shared use of intravenous needles and infection at birth are the major ways to get the disease. Said Dr. Jonathan Mann, of the World Health Organization: "With the number of mosquitoes there are in Zaire, the entire population would already have the disease if they transmitted the virus."

There was a dissenting voice, however. In poverty-stricken Belle Glade, Fla., Dr. Mark Whiteside hailed the French finding as confirmation that insects could transmit AIDS and may be that area's chief cause of infection. Belle Glade (pop. 19,000) has a higher percentage of AIDS victims than Manhattan. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control has studied mosquito- ridden Belle Glade and attributes the AIDS rate to sexual activity or drug use. But, claims Whiteside, director of the area's Tropical Disease Clinic, many victims "are older individuals who are way past their sexually active years." He acknowledges that drug abuse plays a role in Belle Glade's AIDS problem but declares, "What these people need are some simple public health measures."

Nearly lost in the short-lived uproar over the French findings was Chermann's belief that the insects may offer valuable clues to a central riddle. The AIDS virus does not appear to reproduce in insects, he said; if scientists could find out why, they could perhaps develop an AIDS treatment. Such a solution is a long way off, though, and the prognosis for AIDS victims remains grim. Their comforts must be derived chiefly from the effort to live as normally as possible in the face of a ticking clock -- an exhausting enough business without prejudice or the threat of quarantine. "It's great," said Ryan White when asked how he liked being back in school, "but it's a long day."

With reporting by Paul Krueger/San Diego and Janet Thorpe/Paris, with other bureaus