The New York Times - May 29, 1983
Sandra Gardner

Apart from the fears and fallacies are these facts:

- As of mid-May, New Jersey had risen to third place, behind New York and California, in the number of AIDS cases. Since July 1981, there have been 101 cases reported in the state, with 47 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

- Last year, there were 200,000 to 500,000 new cases of genital herpes in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Because reporting of genital herpes cases is not required, exact figures are unavailable.

- From 1977 to 1982, gonorrhea cases in New Jersey rose from 18,836 to 22,298 and syphilis cases from 1,899 to 1,920. About 45 percent of the AIDS cases in New Jersey were homosexuals or bisexuals, 46 percent users of intravenous drugs, 4 percent Haitians, 0.9 percent hemophiliacs and 5 percent those in no apparent risk group. One physician in the field, Dr. James M. Oleske, said that New Jersey's total figure might be skewed in not reflecting drug users involved in homosexual activity.

And Allen W. Kratz, president of the New Jersey Lesbian and Gay Coalition, an umbrella group of two dozen homosexual organizations, said that the figure might be low because many homosexual men from New Jersey sought medical treatment in New York City, thus resulting in including a number of New Jersey AIDS cases in New York's figures.

"I hate to admit it," said Dr. J. Richard Goldstein, the state's Commissioner of Health, "but, yes, it's an epidemic." Of all the sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS is the most deadly - it has been fatal in about 70 percent of the cases - and is causing the most alarm. Last week, Dr. Edward N. Brandt Jr., an Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Resources, said in Washington that the investigation of AIDS had become "the No. 1 priority" of the United States Public Health Service.

One of the major problems in combating AIDS is a lack of funds for research, diagnosis and screening, say those in the field. Dr. Goldstein recently told the Legislature's Joint Appropriations Committee - without formally asking for funds - that $500,000 was needed for a state immunological laboratory at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, where AIDS research is being conducted.

A bill asking for an AIDS task force, with $75,000 attached to it, was introduced in the Assembly in March by Angela L. Perun, Democrat of Plainfield. It was passed unanimously on April 25 and was referred to the Senate Institutions, Health and Welfare Committee, where it is pending.

New Jersey is reportedly the first state to legislate research for AIDS. However, the $75,000, say physicians involved in the research, is a "pittance."

Miss Perun replied that this was "for seed money to get a program started." "I do foresee that there is going to be a bigger price tag on this," she said, "but I'm willing to take this a step at a time." Dr. Oleske, director of immunology at St. Michael's Medical Center in Newark and director of the Division of Allergy, Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, also in Newark, heads the laboratories where the main AIDS research and diagnosis are being done in the state.

Workers screening AIDS cases by hand have been able to complete only four to six a day. A cell sorter-analyzer, which would allow 30 to 40 cases a day to be processed, would cost about $200,000.

"Where does someone like me -who needs one and knows how to use it - get $190,000?" Dr. Oleske said, adding: "My lab is grinding to a halt. I'm running out of funds." Dr. Oleske sees the state as the only source of help, but says: "It seems to me that the tap could be turned on a little quicker. People in my position get frustrated. We see the patients dying." What is known so far about the AIDS organism is that it weakens the body's immune system, leaving its victims helpless against such infections as Kaposi's Sarcoma (a type of cancer), a form of parasitic pneumonia, encephalitis and meningitis.

One New Jersey doctor, in a combined study with a physician at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, has used immunotherapy, or stimulation of the immune system, for patients showing initial symptoms of the syndrome.

In a 30-patient treatment group begun last July, 10 percent of the immune systems of these people were reversed and they have been healthy since last summer, according to Dr. Spartaco Bellomo, senior infectious disease fellow at St. Michael's Medical Center, who did the study with Dr. Michael Grieco.

All 30 patients were given a known stimulator of the immune system during all of last July. In addition, they were taught better nutrition habits and told to decrease their number of sexual contacts.

However, said Dr. Bellomo, "because of lack of funding, we're winding down the study." Some of what has been said about AIDS is simply not true, physicians say. For example, 11 children whom Dr. Oleske has been treating have had AIDS; four have died. He points out, however, that all were in families with a high risk factor (in a majority of cases, one of the parents was anintravenous-drug abuser).

Thus, although the disease can be acquired other than sexually - through blood products or the birth process - Dr. Oleske stresses that "casual contact will not transmit AIDS."

"People aren't really at great risk of getting AIDS from another individual unless they have intense, extensive exposure," he said. "There may be a spark, but there's no fire."

Like AIDS, Herpes Simplex II -genital herpes - has its truths and falsities. There is a new medicine that is "promising," according to Dr. Tim Wolbert, medical director of the Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic of the Newark Department of Health and Welfare.

What the medication does, he says, is to clear up the sores and kill the virus a few days sooner than might happen otherwise; what it does not do is prevent recurrences.

But, Dr. Wolbert contends, "saying that herpes is incurable is the wrong word to use because it sounds like a disease that's going to kill you."

"It isn't," he said, "Many people have only one episode. Another group may have episodes several times a year. Very, very few have it over and over again, so that they're sexually handicapped."

Herpes is highly contagious, but only when the virus is present, which is when it's easily detectable. This factor is one of the major difficulties in testing for the disease, says Richard Blonna, health educator for the state Health Department's Sexually Transmitted Disease Control Program. The only really reliable tests can be done when symptoms are present: a smear under a microscope slide, a culture grown from blister fluid.

Viruses, Mr. Blonna said, have been recovered "in less than 10 percent of all asymptomatic cases." What Clifford G. Freund, chief of the Health Department's Sexually Transmitted Disease Control Program, says is a major problem is a new strain of an old disease: gonorrhea, called Penicillinaseproducing Neisseria Gonorrhea, or PPNG. It is resistant to gonorrhea's former cure, penicillin, and is now being treated with an antibiotic called spectinomycin.

And, Mr. Freund adds, "there's some concern - we've seen cases in the Philippines - of spectinomycin-resistant gonorrhea." He is also worried about the rising syphilis rates in the state. Both gonorrhea and syphilis, he says, have increased over the years because they became less of a priority, and funds for public-health programs for them declined.

"How do I allocate the limited resources and manpower I have?" Mr. Freund asked. "Where do we concentrate our resources: on PPNG, on syphilis, on AIDS, on herpes?"

One way to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, health experts agree, is limiting the numbers of sexual partners. And when one person has a disease, his or her partners are likely to end up with it, even if they are not showing any symptoms, Dr. Wolbert said.

In women, the lack of initially untreated symptoms in these diseases can lead to serious problems, such as pelvic infections, sterility, ectopic (tubal) pregnancies and the birth of malformed babies.

As Dr. Wolpert put it: "If people would come in for treatment, have the courage to tell all their partners so they could get treated, and, if they didn't have anonymous sex and could locate their partners, that would reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted disease."

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