The Washington Blade; Friday, January 10, 1997
Lisa Keen

A California pharmaceutical company announced Monday that it will begin recruiting 1,300 people for a study that tests its new protease inhibitor -- nelfinavir mesylate -- against an already approved protease inhibitor called ritonavir. Both drugs will be taken in combination with nucleoside analogs.

People interested in participating must have a CD4 count of 100 or less and no prior experience with a protease inhibitor other than saquinavir.

For information on study sites in D.C., call Barbara Standridge at (202) 745-8695. For information on study sites in Baltimore, call Jane Rosen at (410) 328-3582.

**Virginia conducting new AIDS survey

The Virginia Department of Health is hoping to survey 1,500 men who have sex with men "to help state health policy makers understand the way men who have sex with men in Virginia are responding to the AIDS epidemic."

The survey is being administered by Virginia Commonwealth University's Survey Research Laboratory and is funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A press release from the Laboratory says the surveys will be distributed through Gay groups and AIDS organizations, and at Gay bars and bookstores.

To obtain more information or a copy of the survey, call 1 (800) 304-9402 and tell the operator you are calling about the "MSM Survey."

**Clinton admini taking hard line on marijuana

The administration of President Clinton, who has taken some hard knocks and been the brunt of much teasing for saying he smoked marijuana but didn't inhale, appeared ready to soften its hard line against the medicinal use of the substance.

Clinton's drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, said last week that the administration would be very tough on doctors who prescribe marijuana as medicine, saying it might exclude them from Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement programs and that the Drug Enforcement Administration might even revoke their licenses to prescribe drugs. That position was announced in response to the passage in California and Arizona of initiatives that allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for medicinal purposes to terminally ill patients. Some people with AIDS have found the substance useful in fighting nausea caused by antiviral drugs and in improving their appetites to combat severe weight loss.

But according to Associated Press, McCaffrey said Tuesday that the government would spend about $1 million now to investigate whether marijuana does in fact have medicinal benefit. The study will be conducted by the independent Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences and is expected to take about 18 months.

In brief ...

--Local attorney Charles Goldman will deliver a lecture Monday, Jan. 13, on "HIV & Disability in the Workplace." The lecture is sponsored by the HOPE Foundation and will explain what laws exist to protect people with HIV, and give suggestions on disclosing one's HIV status to an employer, requesting that an employer accommodate an HIV-related disability, and the importance of documentation. The lecture is free and open to the public. It will take place in the Lipsett Amphitheater at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (near the Medical Center Metro station on the red line) and will begin at 7:30 p.m. For more information, call (202) 466-5783. The next HOPE lecture, on Feb. 10, will be "Cooking for the HIV+: What's Different?"

--The National Association of People With AIDS is offering a free publication to explain current and emerging treatment options. The colorful, well-illustrated 19-page booklet includes such practical information as which antivirals are approved and available and which are in development, what combinations to consider switching to when current therapies fail, and where to call for financial assistance in obtaining drugs. For a copy of "Do You Know Your Options?" write NAPWA at 1413 K St., NW, 7th floor, Washington, DC 20005, or call (202) 898-0414. NAPWA can also be reached through its Web site, http://www.thecure.org.

--Until Feb. 10, the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care is hosting an AIDS Care Web site at http://www.iapac.org to provide information about viral load testing. Visitors to the site can pose questions to two AIDS clinical experts who will post their responses to the most frequently asked questions.

--An article in the January Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that while the amount of HIV in the blood early on is a good predictor of a patient's survival time, the more useful predictor is how well the body's immune system is functioning at the time of infection. The article was submitted by a multinational research team which included the National Institutes of Health.

--POZ magazine's February issue recommends one scoop of whey powder per day to help people with AIDS regain weight and energy.

--The Annapolis AIDS buddy group, HAVEN, is holding a "Buddy Training" Feb. 21-23. For more information, call Joe Staskiewicz at (410) 224-2437.

--A report in the January issue of Nature Medicine says that HIV vaccines produced from live virus may not be as dangerous as researchers once thought. The report, from Harvard Medical School, tested a live-virus vaccine for monkeys and found that only two out of 18 inoculated monkeys became infected, and those two were infected with with "extremely high" doses of the virus administered orally.

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