San Francisco Chronicle - Saturday June 10, 1989
David Perlman, Randy Shilts, Chronicle Science Editor National Correspondent

The delegates heard promising reports from researchers on new drugs to attack the AIDS virus and to prolong the lives of those who suffer AIDS infections.

They heard of possible vaccines that may ultimately protect the entire world from the lethal epidemic. And they heard of prevention programs operating within cultures as disparate as Africa and America.

Day after day the nearly 12,000 delegates to this fifth International Conference on AIDS also heard vigorous, well-organized and often angry protests from those who already fear or face death from the disease.

Although many delegates resented the noisy interruptions, the protesters made their message loud and clear.

They insisted that the pace of practical research must be speeded; that governments are impeding swift access to new drugs that can effectively treat their chronic infections; that discrimination persists in housing, job security, medical care and insurance, and that people with AIDS must be allowed to play a major role in prevention campaigns.

Next June this same conference on the scientific and social challenges of AIDS will hold its sixth annual session in San Francisco.

Next Year's Leaders

Dr. John Ziegler, chief of clinical AIDS research at the University of California at San Francisco, has been named co-chairman of the huge meeting, together with Dr. Paul Volberding of UCSF, who heads the AIDS services at San Francisco General Hospital.

In a closing session yesterday, Ziegler promised the delegates that next year's conference will demonstrate that "rational public policy can be driven by good science." He said that while science can advance knowledge of the disease profoundly, it must also educate policy makers "so that our laws and regulations are reasonable, nondiscriminatory and fair." Recent Incidents

Recalling recent incidents in which U.S. immigration officials have detained three men from abroad - one bound for an AIDS meeting in San Francisco and two who were passing through the states on their way to this Montreal conference - Ziegler said:

"We know that HIV infection is not casually contagious. We try to educate our citizens that persons with AIDS pose no threat in the workplace, schools or other public places. Yet discriminatory laws are still on the books despite the scientific evidence against them.

"We find the current law that restricts travelers to the U.S.A. a deplorable embarrassment. We are working with the scientific community, the AIDS advocacy groups and government agencies to effect changes in this policy. The international conference has great value in attempting to set the record straight and to fight irrational and unfair regulations."

In another closing talk describing how HIV, the AIDS virus, causes disease, Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute reminded the scientists how the weakened immune systems of AIDS-infected people leave them prey to many other viral diseases. And those other viruses, he said, can also serve as co-factors to increase the violence of the attack by HIV in AIDS patients.

Gallo is the nation's most prominent AIDS researcher, but his true eminence comes from his earlier discovery of a similar virus called HTLV-1, which causes a form of leukemia.

That virus, he said, afflicts not only people infected by HIV, but can strike anyone with a severely impaired immune system.

The AIDS virus can also open a path for invasion by the papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer in women, Gallo said, as well as the hepatitis-B virus that can lead to liver cancers.

Virtually everyone, he said, is continually infected by the various herpes viruses, including the recently discovered herpes variety called HHV-6, but they afflict only people with lowered immunity - and most viciously those infected by HIV.

Although this five-day conference often mixed science and politics somewhat uneasily, the connection was perhaps best expressed by an earlier comment from Dr. James Mason, assistant U.S. secretary of health and human services.:

"Every time I think of a public health statistic on AIDS," he said, "I try to remember that behind each number is a child, a man or a woman." "

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