Needed: Nuns and Priests

As trouble erupts over DDI, Dr. Jonas Salk of polio-vaccine fame has a different idea. He thinks AIDS patients may be able to boost their resistance through injections of his Salk HIV immunogen (which consists of inactivated pieces of the virus). Tests with 90 AIDS volunteers at the University of Southern California's cancer center have shown promise, and Salk hopes for a breakthrough similar to his victory over polio in 1955. Last week the Food and Drug Administration approved nationwide trials of the Salk immunogen.

In addition, Salk has asked the state of California for permission to inject his immunogen into ten volunteers who are free of AIDS. He theorizes that the volunteers' immune system will develop antibodies that may provide resistance- building injections for AIDS patients, and that this could eventually lead to an AIDS-prevention vaccine. Confident of the low risks, Salk himself plans to participate, just as he did when developing his polio vaccine.

One curious feature of the Salk plan raised considerable nonmedical controversy last week, when it became known that Roman Catholic nuns and priests had been asked to volunteer to test the Salk vaccine. Searching for volunteers, U.S.C. turned to Roger Mahony, the Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles. University officials explained that "persons with the lowest possible risk" of AIDS infection would be most desirable, and that those committed to celibacy would be ideal. Mahony thereupon sent a letter to all nuns and priests in the archdiocese, asking those 65 or older to consider signing up for Salk's shots. When the news broke last week, even New York City's John Cardinal O'Connor thought of signing up, but U.S.C. already had more than enough volunteers -- about 65, half of whom are nuns and priests.

Gay activists, of course, are furious with the church because of its opposition to condoms on the ground that their use encourages homosexual activity. A Los Angeles representative of the gay militant group ACT UP dismissed Mahony's gesture as mere "public relations." But the number of volunteering nuns and priests was a reminder that such humanitarianism has a long Christian tradition. In 1758, for example, America's leading clergyman, Jonathan Edwards, volunteered to test an experimental vaccine during a raging smallpox epidemic. He died -- of smallpox -- at age 54, just a month after becoming president of Princeton.