Conference on AIDS Begins

Intravenous drug users will likely become the primary group spreading AIDS, legal and medical experts from across the nation said yesterday, launching a three-day Boston conference on the deadly disease.

The American Society of Law and Medicine's symposium, entitled "AIDS: A Modern `Plague'?" will focus on the medical, legal and public policy issues surrounding the disease. Yesterday's events were televised and shown at 200 hospitals nationwide.

Conference Co-Chairman James W. Curran, who directs the AIDS program at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, said he is particularly concerned about intravenous drug users with AIDS spreading the disease.

"We should see some leveling off [in the number of new cases] among gay men," Curran said. "I am not so optimistic about I.V. drug users."

The CDC reported last month that 17 percent of all AIDS patients used intravenous drugs. Fifty-three percent of all female AIDS patients were intravenous drug users, the report said.

American public officials may have to reexamine their position on drug use if they want to curb the spread of AIDS, said another conference Co-chairman, Paul Volberding, who runs the AIDS Activities Division of San Francisco General Hospital. "How can you tell people to stop sharing needles if your public posture is that using needles is not condoned anyway?" he asked.

"Doctors passing out clean syringes [to drug users] is not going to stop [the spread of AIDS]," Curran said.

Conference Co-Chairman Robert C. Gallo of the National Cancer Institute praised a recently announced discovery by a Harvard professor. Associate Professor of Pathology William Haseltine last week announced he has found that the AIDS virus does not reproduce if scientists remove one of its genes, called the tat gene.

Gallo said that the discovery provides "a new target for chemotherapy."

Three Harvard doctors are also participating in the three-day conference at the Lafayette Hotel downtown.

Professor of Medicine Arnold S. Relman yesterday moderated the conference's first event, a panel discussion on the biomedical aspects of AIDS.

Professor of Legal Medicine William J. Curran, the fourth co-chairman, will discuss whether selectively screening for AIDS is discriminatory, and Professor of Psychiatry and Social Medicine Leon Eisenberg will speak on the public's confidence in scientists and doctors.

In order to draw public attention to the conference, Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn proclaimed yesterday "AIDS Awareness Day in Boston."

"The folks at the conference asked us to issue the proclamation," said Flynn spokesman Anne Maguire. "The [event] serves to remind us that we must constantly seek to educate ourselves about the disease."