The New York Times - June 28, 1983
Ronald Sullivan

"We are not seeing in the past six months the doubling of cases that has been predicted," said the Commissioner, Dr. David J. Sencer. "Over the last several months, the rate has remained the same - a constant average of about two cases a day. The rate of increase appears pretty much to have leveled off and reached a plateau."

At the same time, Dr. James Curran, the head of the AIDS task force at the National Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said that while the number of AIDS cases was still rising nationally, the rate of increase appeared to be dropping.

"My feeling is that the number of cases will continue to increase gradually, but more slowly and accompanied by a leveling off," Dr. Curran said in a telephone interview.

Meantime, a bill allocating $5.25 million for AIDS research has been endorsed by Governor Cuomo and approved by both houses of the State Legislature. The bill, sponsored by State Senator Roy M. Goodman, a Manhattan Republican, would establish an AIDS Institute within the State Department of Health.

AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is a deadly disorder that destroys the body's immune defenses against disease and leaves its victims highly vulnerable to a wide range of fatal illnesses. There is no known cause of the disorder nor is there any known cure, and medical experts say the disorder is fatal in most cases. Experts say that AIDS is transmitted only through sexual contact or blood transmission.

According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, homosexuals account for 71 percent of its victims, intravenous drug users for 17 percent, Haitians 5 percent and hemophiliacs 1 percent.

As of June 20, the agency said that 1,641 AIDS cases has been reported, 722 of them, or about 45 percent, in New York City. The agency said the disorder had killed 644 of its victims nationwide.

In an interview, Dr. Sencer said 194 cases of AIDS were reported in the city in the last five months of 1982. During the first five months of this year, he said, the number of cases will be about 293. Some medical experts had expected about 388 cases, twice the number reported in the five preceding months.

"That shows us that the rate of increase appears to beginning to level off," Dr. Sencer said. Move Conservative Patterns

Both Dr. Sencer and Dr. Curran said it was extremely difficult to make any predictions about AIDS since it is not a disorder that follows the traditional epidemiological courses of most diseases. However, they both attributed the apparent slower rate of increase of the disorder to the adoption of more conservative sexual patterns by homosexuals, who are the major risk group.

As evidence, Dr. Sencer said that cases of gonorrhea among males, most of them homosexual, reported by the health department's clinic on the lower West Side of Manhattan had dropped from 3,650 in 1979 to 2,600 in 1982, while cases among women remained constant during the same period.

"That is a hopeful sign that promiscuous sexual life styles among homsexuals have changed," Dr. Sencer said. Other Possibilities

Two other possible explanations for the slower rate of increase, Dr. Sencer said, are that an immunity to the disorder is being generated among the high risk groups, and that AIDS is not as contagious as initially believed.

At a legislative hearing last month, medical experts testified that the cases of AIDS were doubling in number every six months. One of them, Dr. Frederick P. Siegal, chief of the division of clinical immunology at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, said yesterday that he was "not surprised" by Dr. Sencer's findings.

"Sooner or later in any epidemic you are going to see a turnaround," Dr. Siegal said. Another expert, Dr. Alvin E. Friedman-Kein, of the New York University Medical Center, agreed with Dr. Sencer's conclusions and said that "any leveling" of the rate of increase of AIDS was probably the result of "sexual restraint of the main risk group."

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