Word: chermann
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...course, centers on questions about its transmission. On the medical front last week, researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris announced that traces of the AIDS virus have been found in the genes of more than 50 varieties of insects from Africa. The report's author, Jean-Claude Chermann, rushed to assure the public that insects almost certainly pose no threat to humans, but a trigger-happy French press jumped to its own conclusions. MOSQUITOES COULD TRANSMIT AIDS VIRUS, headlined France- Soir...
...fact, Chermann explained, "it takes quite a bit of the virus to engender AIDS" in humans, more than is found in insects. Experts reaffirmed that intimate sexual contact, shared use of intravenous needles and infection at birth are the major ways to get the disease. Said Dr. Jonathan Mann, of the World Health Organization: "With the number of mosquitoes there are in Zaire, the entire population would already have the disease if they transmitted the virus...
Nearly lost in the short-lived uproar over the French findings was Chermann's belief that the insects may offer valuable clues to a central riddle. The AIDS virus does not appear to reproduce in insects, he said; if scientists could find out why, they could perhaps develop an AIDS treatment. Such a solution is a long way off, though, and the prognosis for AIDS victims remains grim. Their comforts must be derived chiefly from the effort to live as normally as possible in the face of a ticking clock -- an exhausting enough business without prejudice or the threat...
...rapid pace of research with the newly identified AIDS virus. There is now little doubt that the viruses isolated by the Pasteur group and by the NCI team under Dr. Robert Gallo are the same microbe. They are, however, slightly different strains, "like two brothers," explains Jean-Claude Chermann of Pasteur. Though a few questions remain, most researchers are now convinced that the virus is indeed the primary cause of AIDS. The evidence is compelling...
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