The Wall Street Journal - 24 Jul 1992
Marilyn Chase, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Conferees came to this city thinking that they knew the enemy: It was the human immunodeficiency virus that was at the root of the fatal sex-and-blood-borne epidemic. Or was it? Suddenly, two slender reports by U.S. researchers suggested that patients can get an AIDS-like disease without the virus and may harbor fragments of a new microbe.

Experts were caught flat-footed. James Curran, the AIDS chief at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, was initially testy: "I didn't think it was worth alerting the nation," he responded. Then, stunned by the outcry that followed, he said he would investigate vigorously, though he urged reporters to put the reports "in the perspective of one million U.S. patients with HIV."

Anthony Fauci, the top AIDS doctor at the National Institutes of Health, said that he saw "no reason to panic" and that "the scientific community is investigating this." Yesterday, the World Health Organization said it plans to call an urgent meeting to assess the evidence.

To AIDS activists who had come here to take the pulse of the larger epidemic, millions of acquired immune deficiency syndrome patients seemed suddenly eclipsed by a few dozen cases of an apparently similar but mysterious new illness. After AIDS expert David Ho of New York was awakened and summoned back to the press room to comment on one of the reports, activist Martin Delaney complained: "We're being jerked around by premature publicity. We've got `science by press conference' in the middle of the night, and the public mind is held hostage."

The stage was set over the weekend as more than 10,000 conferees and reporters piled into Amsterdam. Newsweek reported that Jeffrey Laurence, a Cornell University immunologist, had discovered five patients in his practice with severe immunodeficiency but without a trace of HIV.

At a hastily convened session, other scientists appeared to lend credence to his report by stating that they too had seen patients with AIDS-like symptoms but without HIV in their blood. In all, two to three dozen such anecdotes surfaced, though it's still unclear whether they result from the same cause or are merely a jumble of scientific apples and oranges. Much was made of two cases cited by Luc Montagnier, a discoverer of the AIDS virus, but both of those patients tested positive for HIV in urine tests.

On Wednesday Sudhir Gupta, a cancer specialist at the University of California at Irvine, reported that a 66-year-old woman with AIDS-like symptoms has fragments of what seems to be a new virus.

In an interview yesterday, Dr. Gupta responded to questions about his research raised by scientists at the AIDS conference. Skeptics say the particles described by Dr. Gupta have been known for years and that there's no evidence they cause disease.

Dr. Gupta acknowledged that such particles aren't entirely new. But he said he is convinced that the viral particles he is studying are viruses: "If we take the fluid part from the infected cells, and then put it together with noninfected cells, we can transfer the infection to noninfected cells. We wouldn't be able to do that if it weren't a virus."

Yesterday, as experts continued to examine data, Dr. Gerald Myers, who compiles data on HIV's genetic code at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, stressed that along with the viruses that cause illness, the human body is awash in "hundreds of thousands" of virus fragments, most of them passed harmlessly down through the evolution of the species. Dots on a TV Screen June Osborne, a Michigan public health expert who presides over the National Commission on AIDS, pointed out that doctors may be turning up atypical "AIDS cases" because they are using sophisticated new probes. These "new" cases of immune-system collapse may materialize "like the dots on a TV screen -- they are there because you're looking for them."

However, the 39-year-old Dr. Laurence wasn't willing to soft-pedal his message. "We have to look back to 1981," at the start of the AIDS epidemic, he said in an interview. "Know your sex partner and practice safe sex. People should also bank their own blood. If you travel in a country with a high incidence of AIDS, take your own blood with you."

Back in the U.S., Warner C. Green, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, advised "cautious skepticism" toward the reports from Amsterdam. "One doesn't want to get bent out of shape and cause a public alarm" that forces changes in health policies on the basis of such scant evidence, he said.

Regarding the reports of AIDS-like illness in the 30 or so patients who tested negative for HIV, the top AIDS researcher said, "I'm betting that in six months we'll view this as a new strain of the garden-variety HIV" that is triggering patients to produce antibodies that simply aren't detected by present tests.

920724
WJ920701

Copyright © 1992 - The Wall Street Journal. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the WSJ Permissions Desk.

Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 1992. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All information contained on this website, including information relating to health conditions, products, and treatments, is for informational purposes only. It is often presented in summary or aggregate form. It is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your own physician or other medical professionals. Always discuss treatment options with a doctor who specializes in treating HIV.

Copyright ©1980, 1992. AEGiS. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. .