
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 28, 1994                   TAG: 9407280093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ASSAULT ON AIDS ADVISED

With a cure for AIDS years away, the nation's most prestigious scientific group Wednesday called on the federal government to take far stronger measures to change the human behaviors that can lead to infection.

In a massive report, a 14-member panel of the Institute of Medicine - the health policy arm of the National Academy of Sciences - said the federal government should fund clean-needle exchange programs to help halt the AIDS virus among intravenous drug users.

The panel also said a national survey of sexual practices - quashed by conservatives during the Bush administration - was essential if researchers were to develop an effective campaign to prevent AIDS.

``The absence of information about the actual sexual behaviors in which people are engaging has hampered AIDS prevention efforts,'' the panel concluded.

The panel also called for stepped-up federal funding and research into the biological, psychological and social factors involved in preventing the spread of the AIDS virus.

Bill Grigg, spokesman for the U.S. Public Health Service, had no immediate comment on the panel's recommendations.

AIDS, a fatal disorder of the immune system, is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which is passed through sexual fluids, blood and milk from a nursing mother. An estimated 17 million people worldwide, including one million in the United States, are now infected.

Keith Brodie, a psychiatrist and the former president of Duke University who was chairman of the scientific panel, said in an interview that there was some evidence that HIV prevention can make a difference.

He said a concerted education campaign by gay men in San Francisco, one of the nation's hardest-hit cities, has been responsible for a leveling-off of the epidemic there.

Still, Brodie said, HIV infection appears to be on the rise among younger gay men in San Francisco and elsewhere. Infections also are rising nationwide, especially among heterosexual women.

Although it has been 13 years since the first AIDS case was reported to public health officials, Americans are still putting themselves at risk of the deadly virus, the 326-page report points out.

by CNB