Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia, Inc.; Tuesday December 2 2:56 PM EST
Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
"I have a big family," she said. "We were always big and bad ... If you aren't afraid of the dark you deal with it. I wasn't afraid."
But Joey DiPaolo, of Staten Island, N.Y., was. "I didn't know if I was going to be able to live," he told a class of third-graders at an awards ceremony held by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation to mark World AIDS Day.
The group, which is lobbying to force drug companies to test AIDS drugs on children so they can be prescribed to them, set up a question-and-answer session between three adolescent AIDS patients and a class of curious third-graders.
DiPaolo, who got the bad news when he was 5 years old, was given six months to live. He described how his mother pulled the car over and, sobbing, hugged him after she told him. "We almost crashed," he laughed.
DiPaolo, now 18, is about to start college and is still alive, in part, because of the drugs that have been developed to fight AIDS. So is Broadbent, now 13 and living in Las Vegas, and Tanya Torres, 15.
But the kids described how the regimen of drugs made them sick, how it interfered with their lives and how confusing it was to remember to take dozens of pills a day.
"Some of the medicines I take make me sick," Torres, a plump girl from Daytona Beach, Fla., said in response to questions from the 9- and 10-year-olds at the Janney Elementary School in Washington, D.C.
She said she particularly hated the "nasty"-tasting liquid medicines.
Broadbent, a pigtailed youngster who was born HIV-positive in 1984 and developed AIDS at the age of 5, said she was surprised by the effects of the drugs. "I guess when you guys get sick you're happy because you don't have to go to school," she told the young audience.
"When I get sick, I throw up, I get a headache, I'm cold," she added. Broadbent said her longest stint in the hospital lasted 48 days.
"You know when you get a shot? It's 10 times that, it's 10 million times that. That's how I feel," she said.
DiPaolo said it was hard to remember to take pills at regular intervals. "Sometimes I forget because I'm hanging with my friends," he said. "But I do the best I can."
There are 11 drugs currently available to treat AIDS, but only six of them are approved for children and have special formulations for the young patients.
AIDS is the sixth leading cause of death among children between 1 and 4 years old in the United States. Experts estimate that 2.6 million children have been infected worldwide and that 1.4 million have died.
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who attended the questioning session, has urged drug manufacturers to test more drugs, including AIDS drugs, in children so they can be prescribed more widely.
Doctors say it is important for HIV-infected people to have access to many different drugs, since some of the drugs available do not work in some people, and the virus can quickly become resistant to drugs as well. Children, in particular, respond differently to HIV and to the current drugs. ^REUTERS@
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