A.I.D.S. Wood-testing breakthrough reported

Press, 22 September 1984, Page 5

A.I.D.S. Wood-testing breakthrough reported

NZPA-AP Washington The head of the Public Health Service has said that a blood test would be available soon to determine if someone was exposed to A.LD.S. (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) but it would not tell whether a patient had the disease. Dr Edward Brandt said the test would be useful in detecting whether donated blood contained the A.1.D.5.causing virus, enabling that blood to be discarded and its donor advised to stop giving blood. But Dr Brandt cautioned a House Energy and Commerce sub-committee that positive test results would not necessarily mean the person had A.LD.S.

No effective treatment for A.I.D.S. exists and no vaccine, although Dr Brandt said that scientists were trying to develop a vaccine that could be ready in a few years.

Use of the tests, which will be widely available in several months, also brought words of caution from Dr David Sencer, the New York City Health Commissioner.

He called the implications of a positive test result frightening to an individual who may never have the disease. “Will insurance rates or coverage be affected? Will the test be used as a method of discrimination? The answer to these questions is,

unfortunately, probably, yes,” he said. A.1.D.5., identified by the Health and Human Services Secretary, Mrs Margaret Heckler, as the nation’s top health priority, is characterised by a breakdown in the immune system. Victims then are susceptible to numerous life-threatening illnesses. Researchers announced last April that they had found .the probable cause of A.1.D.5., a variant of a known human cancer virus called HTLV-HI.

A process has been developed to mass-produce the virus, which enabled development of the blood tst and may one day lead to a vaccine.