Slapping Down The Mosquito

Can mosquitoes, which carry such diseases as malaria and yellow fever, also transport the deadly AIDS virus? The question arose in 1985, when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta studied an unusually dense clustering of AIDS sufferers in the mosquito-infested area of Belle Glade, Fla. Last week the Atlanta Constitution stirred up the mosquito scare anew by publishing the preliminary findings of a research team sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Its tentative conclusion: the AIDS virus can indeed ride as a passenger on the blood-sucking mosquito.

To AIDS investigators, the reports of the virus in mosquitoes, bedbugs and even tear drops have been a "distracting sideshow." The pivotal question is not where the virus is hiding or riding, but whether in that form it can cause disease.

Not surprisingly, scientists last week quickly slapped down the suggestion that the pesky insects may be infecting humans with the AIDS virus. For one thing, the virus does not reproduce inside mosquitoes, as it does in human blood. Nor is it found in insect saliva, which generally transports insect- borne infections. Even under perfect laboratory conditions, researchers have been unable to produce an AIDS infection by a mosquito or another biting insect.

Indeed the earlier CDC investigation of Belle Glade failed to find AIDS infections except among members of traditional risk groups and their sex partners. "If mosquitoes are doing it," said a CDC spokeswoman last week, "they are very selective about who they are biting."