"Experts Skeptical of Claim About AIDS Treatment"

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1989. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

"Experts Skeptical of Claim About AIDS Treatment"

Washington Post (12/20/89), P. A4
Okie, Susan

Abstract: AIDS experts are reserving judgement on the implications of a research team's claim that it eliminated HIV from the body of an infected patient using high doses of AZT, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and bone marrow transportation. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony S. Fauci said the story was "blown of proportion" by press reports. Jerome Groopman of Harvard Medical School said, "We and others are planning on doing it." However, he cautioned, "People shouldn't jump to think this is a generalizable therapy." Many AIDS patients, Groopman said, "would not be likely to survive a transplant or don't have a compatible donor." Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University Medical Center reported that the technique, developed to treat lymphoma and leukemia, rid a 41-year-old AIDS patient's blood of HIV within 32 days after the transplant. However, a recurrence of lymphoma killed the man a short time later. Up to 70 percent of non-AIDS patients who undergo the therapy die of complications from the procedure or a recurrence of cancer.

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