Chicago Tribune (CT) - FRIDAY December 18, 1987
John N. Maclean, Chicago Tribune

But Dr. Charles Schuster said that, as with many aspects of AIDS, too little data has been collected for scientists to know the scope of the problem or to be able to predict how serious it might become.

Schuster appeared before the Presidential Commission on AIDS during the first of two days of hearings on AIDS and intravenous drug abuse. According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, the federal agency that keeps AIDS statistics, there is a very low rate of infection among heterosexuals who do not use intravenous drugs and have no known sexual exposure to people at high risk of contracting AIDS. The rate of infection could be as low as one-tenth of 1 percent, the agency reported.

"In selected groups within the general population-blood donors, civilian applicants for military service, Job Corps entrants, (some) hospital patients and women seen in family planning and other women's health clinics-the prevalence of HIV (the virus that can trigger AIDS) infection has generally been a fraction of 1 percent," the CDC said in a report, but added there is much higher prevalence in inner-city populations.

"It is certainly better than the extreme extent of the problem that some people had feared," said Dr. Tim Dondero of the CDC, who helped in the AIDS studies. "It is clear that very high levels of infection are obvious in the risk groups but not in terms of the groups at less risk."

The drug abuser, he said, could be the doorway for the spread of AIDS into the general population. "The potential is clearly there," Dondero said.

Dr. Beny Primm, who chaired the AIDS commission hearings, cited CDC statistics showing that blacks and Hispanics are the chief victims of AIDS among heterosexuals who are not members of the high-risk groups-drug abusers and those who have engaged in homosexual sex.

CDC figures show that 11 percent of blacks with AIDS are in this group, 4 percent of Hispanics and 1 percent of whites. The CDC says many of the people in this group were born in countries where heterosexual sex is believed to play a role in transmission.

The concern is that this group of heterosexuals can give AIDS to others, extending the epidemic into the general population. Schuster said AIDS has been transmitted that way, but no data has been gathered to show how frequently this may have happened.

"It occurs, but all we have are anecdotes," Schuster said. "This is our biggest fear, that the vector of infection into the heterosexual population is through the intravenous drug users."

Primm, who heads a drug abuse clinic in New York City and is considered the spokesman on the commission for minority groups, said, "Unless we begin massive treatment programs of drug abusers, we could have a holocaust on our hands," he declared.

The commission intends to make recommendations to President Reagan in February on what might be done quickly to address several urgent problems connected with AIDS, including the problem of AIDS among drug abusers. A succession of witnesses told the commission more treatment and education must be provided to drug abusers.

"The future of AIDS lies, to a great extent, in combating drug abuse," New York City Mayor Edward Koch told the commission. "The majority of intravenous drug users in New York City are male heterosexuals whose sexual partners are generally non-drug-using women in their peak childbearing years.

"Most of the 250 children with AIDS (in New York City) have had an intravenous drug user for one or both parents. The most heartbreaking of all tragedies associated with AIDS is its effect upon children: It steals their parents and robs them of their futures."

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