Subject: As Many as 380,000 in U. S. Are Expected To Have AIDS by 1992
Date: Published: 6/14/88 89 lines
Source:  WALL STREET JOURNAL. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   As Many as 380,000 in U. S. Are Expected
   To Have AIDS by 1992, Researcher Says
    ---
   By Marilyn Chase
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   STOCKHOLM -- One new case of acquired immune deficiency
syndrome is now being diagnosed in the U. S. every 14 minutes.
   That's the grim growth rate of the AIDS epidemic, which
currently has inflicted 65,000 people in the U. S. and is
expected to inflict between 365,000 and 380,000 by 1992, said
James Curran, AIDS program director for the U. S. Centers for
Disease Control in Atlanta.  Europe currently counts 12,200
victims and Africa -- in what officials acknowledge is an
underestimate -- reports 11,500.
   Dr. Curran addressed the "predictions versus the reality"
of his agency's AIDS outlook at the fourth international
conference on AIDS here Monday.
   CDC's count of AIDS cases, often criticized and recently
blurred by re-definitions of the disease, was defended by the
official "as 98.5% accurate" through last year.
   He said the range in the 1992 forecast stems from two
different mathematical models used by researchers at the CDC
and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
   However, when it comes to estimates of the infected
population -- that is those who carry the virus but aren't
yet sick -- Dr. Curran admitted that CDC's crystal ball has
been cloudy.  His 1986 estimate of one million infected people
was then "almost certainly too high," and he said the current
range is only now one million to 1.5 million.
   To try and get a better grasp on the real numbers of
infected people, the CDC now is drawing anonymous blood
samples to test for AIDS antibody at 30 hospitals in the
nation's midsection.  So far, he said, 15 samples from four of
the hospitals in the continuing study indicate that about
three people per 1,000 carry the AIDS virus -- more than four
times the rate of infection in the U. S. military.
The rate found by the study, which is designed to be
definitive and to squelch second guessing, already is being
attacked as too low.  Robert Redfield of Walter Reed Army
Hospital in Washington, D. C. said in an interview that CDC is
sampling only hospitals in the Midwest, and has excluded from
its count anyone admitted to the hospitals with cancer,
tuberculosis, or any immune weakness suspected of being AIDS
related.
   "It's not the way I would have done it," Dr. Redfield
said.  "To me, the purpose shouldn't be to minimize the
problem, but to find out" how big the problem is.
   Dr. Redfield, a major in the U. S. Army, has advocated
wider blood testing because "people with the AIDS virus have
a right to early diagnosis so doctors can treat them early.
They're being denied that right."
   But such statistics gathering carries a political charge
to AIDS-patient advocates who fear wider testing may lead to
discrimination.  John James, who writes a newsletter for the
AIDS-drug underground in San Francisco, said "the fear is
that American business will follow the military in excluding
the infected from sensitive jobs or any job on the
presumption that they have AIDS dementia."
   In Europe, even more than in the U. S., intravenous drug
users are accounting for more and more AIDS cases.  There,
they now make up almost a third of the cases, mainly
concentrated in France, Spain and Italy, said Jean-Baptiste
Brunet of France.  He said AIDS-infected Europeans now number
somewhere between 300,000 and 800,000.  New cases of AIDS in
Europe are doubling every 11 months, and are forecast to top
56,000 by the end of 1989.
   In Africa, the main risk of AIDS continues to come from
heterosexual relations, said Bosenge N'galy of Zaire.  Dr. 
N'galy said the continent's reported 11,500 cases "is clearly
an underestimate."  The rate of infection across Africa varies
from 1% in the Cameroon to 15% in Uganda.  Some 18% of blood
donors in Rwanda and Zambia are infected, he said.  Blood
screening for antibodies is still very limited in Africa
because of the prohibitively high cost of the antibody test.
   The infection of as many as 12% of pregnant African women
in some areas (half of whose children will be born infected)
threatens to undo recent progress against infant mortality in
Africa, he said.

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