Close contact does not spread A.I.D.S. says report

Press, 7 February 1986, Page 7

Close contact does not spread A.I.D.S. says report

NZPA-Reuter Boston A.I.D.S. is not transmitted through such casual contacts as hugging, or by sharing eating utensils, towels, or even toothbrushes with a victim, according to a report published yesterday. The research reported in “The New England Journal of Medicine” was based on a study of 39 people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome and 100 people living in the same home with them. It said housemates who did not have sex with A.I.D.S. victims ran "little or no risk” of coming down with the syndrome. But another report in the magazine raises the possibility that women can get A.I.D.S. through artificial insemination.

In a separate study Jacqueline Morgan and Jim Nolan, of Sydney, said four women in an artificial insemination programme showed signs of being exposed to the A.I.D.S. virus after receiving semen from the same donor. They said donors must now pass the A.I.D.S. blood test before their semen would be accepted for the programme. “The New England Journal of Medicine” study was undertaken by three New York hospitals and the Federal Centres for Disease Control, in Atlanta, to alleviate public fears — bordering at times on hysteria — that A.I.D.S. can be caught by close non-sexual contacts, including touching the tears or saliva of an infected person. Medical researchers believe that A.I.D.S. can be spread only by injections of contaminated blood or blood products or by intimate sexual contact.

The study examined a large group of people who had close personal contact with A.I.D.S. victims, often before they knew their

loved one had it. The results offered “strong supporting evidence that the A.I.D.S. virus is not transmitted by casual contact even within a family unit in which there is intimate (non-sexual) contact with infected persons,” said Dr Merle Sande, of San Francisco General Hospital, in an editorial in the "Journal” on the study. Dr Sande said the results should allow doctors “to take a more active and influential role in quelling the hysteria over the casual transmission of A.1.D.5.”

© In Washington the President, Mr Ronald Reagan, said yesterday that he had directed the United States SurgeonGeneral, Dr Everett Koop, to prepare “a major report to the American people” on A.I.D.S. Mr Reagan made the disclosure as he toured the Department of Health and Human Services to rally Government employees behind his proposals for welfare reform and improvements in catastrophic insurance coverage. "One of our highest public health priorities is going to continue to be finding a cure for A.1.D.5.,” Mr Reagan said. “We are going to continue to try to develop and test vaccines and we are going to focus also on prevention. In this regard, I am asking the SurgeonGeneral to prepare a major report to the American people” on A.I.D.S. Although Congress has appropriated SUS 244 million ($466.04 million) for A.I.D.S. research and services this year, Mr Reagan’s new Budget — sent to Capitol Hill yesterday — seeks only SUS2I3 million ($401.1 million) in Budget authority for 1987, which will begin on October 1. vj