Hiv

The number of newly diagnosed HIV and AIDS cases among gay and bisexual men grew 11 percent in the four-year period ending last year, raising fears of a new outbreak of the disease in a group experts say has become increasingly casual about taking protective measures. The increase was offset somewhat by a decline in new cases among intravenous drug users, so the overall rate increased by 1 percent over the same period, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released yesterday on World AIDS Day. The CDC estimates that about 40,000 new HIV infections occur each year in the United States, and that between 850,000 and 950,000 Americans are living with the disease, with about 280,000 not knowing they are infected, said Dr. Ronald O. Valdiserri, deputy director of the CDC's HIV prevention program.

Dwight R. Smallwood was convicted of attempted murder in 1994 for using an unusual weapon -- his body.Smallwood, who knew he was HIV-positive, raped three women at gunpoint during a week of crime near his home in Temple Hills in September 1993. Today, the state's highest court will hear arguments over whether the attempted murder conviction, the first of its kind in Maryland, was justified.His lawyers are expected to argue that the conviction endangers an estimated 15,000 people in Maryland who have acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)

The University of Maryland's Institute of Human Virology is one of four research centers nationwide seeking volunteers to test an experimental HIV vaccine. "We're accepting volunteers immediately," said Dr. William A. Blattner, director of the institute's Epidemiology and Prevention Division. The vaccine was developed at Emory University in Atlanta, and is being marketed by GeoVax Inc., an Atlanta biotech company. Clinical trials also are being conducted at St. Louis University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The University of California at San Francisco has given the green light to a controversial experiment in which a man will be injected with bone marrow from a baboon in the hope the animal's immune system will help him fight the AIDS virus.Clearance by medical committees evaluating the safety and ethics of the experiment means that preparations can begin for the procedure on volunteer Jeff Getty, a 38-year-old Oakland AIDS activist who has battled critics and the Food and Drug Administration to win approval for the test.

MILWAUKEE, Wis. - Computers are spreading a different kind of virus these days: HIV, the one that causes AIDS. Internet chat rooms have become the modern equivalent of the backrooms and bathhouses where the disease spread during the 1980s, health officials said at an AIDS conference last week. A nationwide survey of nearly 3,000 users of a Web site popular with gay men found that 82 percent met sex partners online, and 60 percent reported having unprotected sex with them. "Almost one-quarter reported 100 or more sexual partners," said Sabina Hirshfield of the Medical and Health Research Association of New York, which did the study with Columbia University and others.

MIAMI, Fla. -- The state of Florida believes Ignacio Perea Jr. tried to kill three young boys. The alleged weapon? The AIDS virus that has infected his body.The 31-year-old son of Cuban immigrants, Mr. Perea sits in a Dade County jail today, charged with attempted first-degree murder in the alleged kidnapping and sexual assault of the boys in separate attacks. When police arrested him in late 1991, they found a receipt in his wallet indicating that he was being treated for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)

NationsBank Corp.'s Maryland bank must stand trial on discrimination charges in connection with the firing of an employee who is HIV positive, an appeals court ruled.In so ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., reversed a lower court that had decided in favor of NationsBank without a trial.In its decision, the appeals court said William Runnebaum had established sufficient evidence of discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act to go to trial. Runnebaum was diagnosed with HIV in 1988.

The average patient diagnosed with HIV today can expect to live 24 years - more than triple the life span of those diagnosed with the AIDS-causing virus in the early 1990s, according to experts reporting today in a national medical journal. But with HIV/AIDS patients living longer and using more sophisticated drug regimens, a lifetime of treatment can cost $385,000 in today's dollars, straining the federal government's ability to provide for those in need. "It's a very good investment, but it's an investment," said Dr. Bruce R. Schackman, chief of health policy at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and lead author of a paper appearing in Medical Care, a journal published by the American Public Health Association.

PHILADELPHIA - Calling the worldwide spread of HIV/AIDS a "direct challenge to the compassion of our country," President Bush announced yesterday that Vietnam would be added to the list of nations eligible for emergency U.S. help in fighting the epidemic. "We're putting a history of bitterness behind us with Vietnam," Bush said, speaking at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church, a largely African-American congregation with faith-based social programs. Bush said he is poised to send $500 million more to prevent and treat the disease in Vietnam and 14 other countries in Africa and the Caribbean.

I've got a little bone to pick with a guy named J.L. King. Standing on the stage of Coppin State University's James Weldon Johnson Auditorium last week, King told an audience of 50 about his past - he was married, the father of three and having occasional sexual trysts with men - and his best-selling book On The Down Low: A Journey Into The Lives Of "Straight" Black Men Who Sleep With Men. King wasn't in town to promote the book, although it was being...