Miami Herald - Friday, September 27, 1985
Steve Sternberg, Herald Medical Writer

They number about one million.

Among them are more than 60 percent of male homosexuals and 85 percent of type-A hemophiliacs.

Of those infected, as many as one in 50 will develop the disease, while the rest remain infectious.

Those are among the major findings published today in the latest exhaustive report by federal researchers tracking the epidemic of AIDS throughout the United States.

The report, published in the journal Science, predicts that by July 1986, as many as 12,000 new cases of AIDS will be diagnosed throughout the United States -- more than half from outside the AIDS hotbeds of New York and California.

That would bring the total cases to 25,000 nationwide.

In chilling testimony before a Senate subcommittee Thursday, a top Harvard medical researcher said that AIDS is a "serious threat to every single human being in this country."

Dr. William A. Haseltine, of the Harvard Medical School, said AIDS is "spreading beyond what we expected" and is "a much, much bigger problem than we thought we had."

Although the CDC study starkly outlines the threat of widespread contagion from AIDS, it also offers this reassurance: The AIDS virus, HTLV-III, is killed by heat. Heating has been used to kill the virus in commercially available clotting agents used to heal hemophiliacs' wounds.

In addition, said Dr. James Curran, head of AIDS research at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, there is no evidence that AIDS can be transmitted through food or by mosquitoes.

"It is unlikely that casual contact will play a significant role" in transmitting AIDS," Curran said. "Sexual transmission of the virus will account for the vast majority of cases in the United States for years to come.

"Homosexual men and persons who abuse intravenously administered drugs will remain at extraordinary risk for AIDS; the disease will probably become the major cause of death in these populations."

As of Sept. 16, the CDC had reported 133 cases of AIDS in heterosexual men and women, all of whom reported having sexual contact with AIDS patients or with someone who might have been exposed to the disease.

The CDC also says preliminary studies have shown a link between female prostitution and AIDS in two American cities.

In Miami, 10 of 25 prostitutes tested at an AIDS screening clinic proved infected with AIDS. Eight of the 10 were intravenous drug users.

In Seattle, five of 92 prostitutes tested at a county health clinic had been infected with the virus. The CDC said that little is known about transmission through prostitutes, and that federally backed research is now being planned.

To illustrate what that means to heterosexuals, Harvard's Haseltine told the Senate subcommittee in Washington of a study showing that U.S. soldiers in West Germany are being infected with AIDS by Berlin prostitutes who have acquired the disease through intravenous drug use.

Those GIs will sexually transmit the virus to their wives and girlfriends, and "we will face military manpower problems" as infected soldiers start showing the debilitating symptoms of the disease, a process that sometimes takes years, Haseltine said.

In the established risk groups -- male homosexuals and bisexuals, abusers of intravenous drugs, and hemophiliacs -- AIDS rates rival those of all cancers and heart disease.

For example, the AIDS rate among drug users and hemophiliacs in New York and New Jersey has reached 250 of every 100,000, compared with national cancer rates of 331.5 for every 100,000 people.

And AIDS always is fatal, while cancer is not. The annual AIDS death rate among people in high-risk groups in New York and New Jersey has outstripped that of heart disease in all groups nationwide. Heart disease kills 191 per 100,000 people each year.

In New York, AIDS already has become the leading cause of death for men ages 25 to 44.

The study has shown that some of the high-risk individuals are in greater danger of contracting AIDS than others. In 1984, studies indicate, 68 percent of homosexual San Francisco men were infected with the AIDS virus.

One of every two drug users in New York and New Jersey carries the virus, an incidence reaching from 72 to 85 percent among hemophiliacs who had received clotting agents.

That doesn't mean that all of those infected with the AIDS virus develop AIDS, though they remain infectious and can transmit the disease, the researchers say. One early study in San Francisco showed that infection with the AIDS virus is 28 times more common than AIDS.

Curran and his co-workers believe that figure is high. Elsewhere, the rate probably is closer to one case of AIDS for every 50 or 100 people infected.

That means that between 500,000 and one million Americans already have been infected with the virus.

The infection persists for years. One study found the AIDS virus in the blood of 8 of 12 homosexual blood donors; all had remained symptom-free from four to six years.

Herald Staff Writer Sydney P. Freedberg and Washington Bureau reporter Ellen Warren contributed to this report.

Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 1985. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

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