Miami Herald; Saturday, November 9, 1991
Jacquee Petchel, Herald Staff Writer

Today, there is no cure for the disease. And there probably won't be one this century.

Experts say the most we can expect soon are new drugs that will slow the growth of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and postpone the onset of AIDS. In the most optimistic scenario, scientists might be able to delay serious symptoms of AIDS for many years, even decades.

"I'm not sure that we'll cure AIDS or find a vaccine for AIDS in this century," said Dr. Margaret Fischl of the University of Miami, one of the country's leading AIDS researchers.

"We will, I hope, find more treatments that will improve life and allow people to live 10 or 20 more years. And we may be able to do that in the next two to four years."

Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on AIDS research in the last decade, the government has produced only two licensed drugs to slow down the virus: AZT and ddI.

"To sit around hoping for a cure is quite foolish," said Dr. June Osborn, chairwoman of the National Commission on AIDS. "Let's forestall the dreadfulness of it by extending the lives of people with HIV and AIDS."

The commission, empowered to advise Congress and the president on a federal AIDS policy, made a national call this year for safe and effective drugs to treat AIDS. It cautioned that drugs like AZT and ddI are only "halfway measures."

More than 50 drugs to attack HIV or boost the immune system have entered human testing in the United States. Scientists are also testing new vaccines that could be given to people who already have the virus to help their bodies keep it in check.

"We know of nothing right now that kills the AIDS virus, that will attack already damaged cells of the immune system," Fischl said. "That's going to be the uphill battle. We're going to have to pick apart the virus. It's going to be tedious and time-consuming."

Today, a person like Magic Johnson may not feel serious symptoms or develop life-threatening infections related to the virus for five to 10 years, Fischl said. The longer doctors can prolong life, the greater the chance an HIV-positive person might live to benefit from better treatments.

"Like other chronic diseases, this is not something where the word 'cure' has as much relevance as finding ways to make people live longer," added Osborn, who is also dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan.

Many doctors are optimistic.

"If we can keep applying treatments to people who haven't developed damage from the virus and don't have the disease itself, we can hope that they'll die of old age and not AIDS," said Dr. William Reiter, director of the Center for Special Immunology in Fort Lauderdale.

"The message is that if patients are tested early enough that the virus hasn't caused too much damage, then we can be optimistic."

Scientists and activists for years have criticized the government's response to the AIDS epidemic, saying drug research has bogged down in bureaucracy and is moving too slowly. Typically, it can take years to get drugs from the laboratory to the pharmacy, the result of laborious testing procedures and a rigorous review at the Food and Drug Administration.

Congress has sharply criticized staff shortages in the national program to find AIDS drugs, saying the "chilling" shortfalls have slowed research.

"It's never going to be fast enough if you've got the virus or the disease now. We're starting to make much better strides," said Dr. Mervyn Silverman, president of the American Foundation for AIDS Research in New York. "Whether we'll ever have a major bullet to cure the disease, I don't think so, not in the foreseeable future.

"But I believe we'll find something to stop it in its tracks."

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