New Urgency on AIDS

"Slowly, AIDS is regaining its status as an untreatable disease. [According to recent study], more than half of all AIDS patients have strains of the virus that are resistant to two or more of the AIDS drugs. More than three-quarters harbor a strain resistant to at least one drug.

". . . All of this makes it more urgent than ever for public health officials and AIDS activists to stress prevention for high-risk individuals.

". . . The research should also move elected officials in Massachusetts who have balked at letting the state Department of Public Health set up needle-exchange programs in cities with high rates of injection drug use. In Boston, Cambridge, Northampton, and Provincetown, which have such programs, the spread of the virus has been reduced without encouraging more drug abuse. But in cities like New Bedford and Springfield, which lack needle exchanges, contaminated drug syringes are the single biggest cause of new AIDS infections.

"Nationally, the evidence of increasing resistance should spur efforts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to encourage biomedical companies to bring fast and reliable AIDS tests to market. Such tests . . . are available overseas. But according to the Wall Street Journal, one company here has blocked the introduction of the new tests in the United States to protect its own slower tests.

"Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said last week that the new data point up the need to develop new AIDS drugs that doctors can prescribe for patients when they see the benefits of older ones fading. Scientists also hope one day to develop an effective vaccine against the disease. In the meantime, though, the focus must be on prevention, using all the practical and readily available means for stopping the transmission of this dreaded disease."

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