Subject: U. S. Health Agency's AIDS Report Gives Instructions on Condoms, Drug Needles 
Date: Published: 6/11/93 (72 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology & Health:
    U. S. Health Agency's AIDS Report Gives
    Instructions on Condoms, Drug Needles
    ----
    By Marilyn Chase
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    BERLIN -- The U. S. Public Health Service has taken the condom out
 of the wrapper.
    At the Ninth International Conference on AIDS here, Surgeon
 General Antonia Novello issued an updated report on acquired immune
 deficiency syndrome that gives explicit instructions on how to use a
 condom and how to clean intravenous needles.
    A Republican appointee, Dr. Novello was stymied in her efforts to
 issue the report in 1991 by conservative objections.  She said Donna
 Shalala, President Clinton's secretary of health and human services,
 told the surgeon general in January 1993 to publish the updated
 report.
    Like the first edition seven years ago, the new report notes "the
 surest way to protect yourself against HIV infection is not to have
 sex at all, or to have sex with only one steady, uninfected
 partner."  But whereas the prior report kept prophylactics under
 wraps, the new volume contains photographs of unwrapped condoms, and
 a five-step guide for users.
    The new report still counsels people against intravenous drug
 use, and strongly urges users to stop, or else to use fresh needles.
 But it breaks ground by including instructions on how to clean
 needles with household bleach to kill the virus and reduce the
 users' risk of contracting AIDS.  
    "This is the most explicit we have been," said Dr. Novello, a
 pediatrician and career Public Health Service officer who brandished
 the report with its condom photos wearing her brass-buttoned
 health-service uniform.  The report stops short of condoning free
 needle-exchange programs, now active in 33 cities across the U. S. 
 Dr. Novello said the strategy, still illegal in half of the cities,
 needs more data before being federally sanctioned.
    The updated surgeon general's report also stresses the new wave
 of the epidemic in women, children and minorities.  To date, an
 estimated one million Americans are infected with HIV, and more than
 289,000 have developed AIDS.  Of these, more than 182,000 have died.
 Once largely confined to homosexual men, the profile is changing:
 11% of AIDS cases were in women and 9% of cases because of
 heterosexual contact in 1992, the report says.  African-Americans and
 Hispanics, one-fifth of the U. S. population, account for nearly half
 of AIDS cases.
    The report serves as Dr. Novello's swan song because she is
 stepping down as surgeon general at the end of the month.  Jocelyn
 Elders is President Clinton's choice to succeed Dr. Novello as
 surgeon general.
    The report can be obtained by calling 1-800-342-AIDS.  
    Separately, researchers from France, England and Italy presented
 at the AIDS conference the first, very preliminary human-test
 results of a new drug from Hoffman-La Roche Inc., a unit of Roche
 Holding Ltd.  of Switzerland.  The new drug thwarts HIV by blocking a
 key enzyme -- a protease -- which the virus needs to churn out
 copies of itself.
    Jean Dormont, a French AIDS researcher from the Assistance
 Public-Hopitaux de Paris, said that a 16-week test of 60 patients
 showed the compound RO 31-8959 so far looks generally safe, and
 seems to spark a rise in immune cells.  English and Italian studies
 echoed his preliminary results.  At least a dozen groups are trying
 to develop similar drugs, but much more study is needed to prove
 they work.

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