Troubling Dispatches From the AIDS Front

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:

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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. (See related story on page 30.)