The New York Times - Sunday, August 8, 1982
Robin Herman

Doctors treating homosexuals say they are being flooded with telephone calls from old and new patients with minor complaints. Clinics offering testing for the disease are oversubscribed. And homosexual men speak of great confusion over how to adjust their health habits to avoid the disease, which remains largely mysterious in its symptoms and causes.

The disease - called acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or A.I.D.S. - produces a suppression of the body's natural defenses and sets the stage for the intrusion of several deadly afflictions, including a rare form of cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma and a rare pneumonia.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta have recorded 505 cases of the syndrome coupled with the cancer, pneumonia or other opportunistic infections since the national facility began gathering data on cases in June of last year. Of those people, 202 have died, or 40 percent. The cases include 243 residents of New York City.

Two New Cases a Day

Reports of the disease have not abated. About two new cases a day are recorded at the disease control center. Officials there attribute the increase both to improved reporting and to a real rise in cases. The disease has already killed more people than reported cases of toxic shock syndrome and the original outbreak of Legionnaire's disease, and it has engendered as much fear.

Dr. David J. Sencer, New York City's Health Commissioner, has termed the immune deficiency syndrome "a major health problem." He emphasized that groups other than homosexual men were involved. Groups afflicted with the syndrome include more than 60 heterosexual men and women who were drug abusers and used intravenous needles; 30 male and female immigrants from Haiti, all heterosexual, and some hemophiliacs who use blood products to combat their illness.

Cases in 27 States

Doctors theorize that the disease is an infectious agent transmitted in a complex way through sexual contact or through the blood. Yet in many cases one person in a longtime sexual relationship will get the syndrome, while the partner will not.

The disease has been recorded in 27 states; New York State's 259 cases is the largest concentration. The Centers for Disease Control, several of New York City's medical centers and the city's Health Department have been working intensely to find the syndrome's cause. Meanwhile, informational groups have sprung up among homosexuals, such as the Gay Men's Health Crisis group, which has published an exhaustive pamphlet on the syndrome and runs a 24-hour hot line.

The National Gay Task Force is coordinating a conference on the disease, and publications for homosexuals, including The Advocate, Christopher Street and New York Native, have been printing extensive articles about it.

'Feeling of Hopelessness'

"It's basically frightening because no one knows what's causing it," said John Kolman, a 28-year-old law student who went to the St. Mark's Clinic in Greenwich Village last week complaining of persistent swollen glands, thought to be one early symptom of the disease. "Every week a new theory comes out about how you're going to spread it."

Physicians say they are seeing panic-stricken patients who display skin lesions that turn out to be bug bites, poison ivy, black and blue marks or freckles of no medical consequence. One major symptom of Kaposi's sarcoma is purplish or discolored nodules or lumps on top of or beneath the skin.

"There's tremendous anxiety and it translates into panic behavior," said Dr. Roger W. Enlow, a clinical researcher at the Hospital for Joint Diseases, Beth Israel Medical Center, who helps run the all-volunteer St. Mark's Clinic.

Dr. Sencer, the Health Commissioner, said: "It's unfortunate we don't have anything positive to recommend to people at the present time. We just don't know."

Some General Advice

But he said the limiting of sexual partners was "probably good general advice" because of the number of other sexually transmissible diseases, including venereal diseases such as herpes, parasitic diseases and hepatitis.

Leaders of homosexual groups, including the National Gay Task Force, and several doctors emphasized that the immune deficiency syndrome does not result from being homosexual but rather seems to have settled on this particular group among others.

They said that no homosexual women were known to have the syndrome and that homosexual men have as many different life styles as heterosexual men. Only a segment of them, they said, are the "sexually active" men whom doctors identify as being most at risk of getting the syndrome because of their exposure to more partners.

Dr. James W. Curran, head of the A.I.D.S. project at the Centers for Disease Control, said the concern among homosexuals about the disease was "not ill-founded" because of its severity and the uncertainty about it.

"The other concern," he added, "is there are many other groups that seem to be affected with similar illnesses, and the homosexual community does not want to be blamed for this problem."

MEDICINE AND HEALTH; HOMOSEXUALITY
820808
NYT820801