Word: viruses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...insult to my reason and my faith in medical science to read last week's reports that Dr. Vernon Mark, Harvard Medical School associate professor of surgery, has called for a massive testing of the general public for antibodies to the HTLV-III virus associated with AIDS, and what amounts to a quarantine of all persons testing positive, a step directly contradicting even the most strictly and conservatively applied sound medical knowledge. Now, in the Crimson of Dec. 6, I must endure more of this hysterical nonsense. "People are not being told a straight story," says Dr. Mark. "We should...
...Mark proposes to screen the blood of everyone in Massachusetts for the AIDS-associated virus, LAV/HTLV-III, and then to have carriers who meet some ill-defined eriterion of "sexual promiscuity" quarantined on an island in Buzzard...
...Testing of the sort that Dr. Mark proposes is not feasible and if it were would not provide useful information. The blood tests currently available cannot accurately identify infectious carriers of the AIDS-related virus, LAV/HTLV-III...
...possession of some new discovery about the nature of AIDS which negates all medical research up to this point, he is simply misinformed about the disease's epidemiology and stands to be corrected. AIDS is transmitted when certain bodily fluids of one person who is carrying the HTLV-III virus enter the body of another person. It has never been transmitted by coughing, snee/ing, spitting, doorknobs, tabletops, combs, toilet seats, or any casual or accidental contract, and will not be so transmitted in future. Period. There exists no AIDS risk of which current medical knowledge is not aware. If current...
...these precautions are implemented, people will not stop getting AIDS--a million people currently carry the virus, and some of them will develop the disease--but the virus will not be transmitted to anyone who does not already have it. Period. They are simple to implement, and all of them are essentially risk-free. Dr. Mark, observe: we can reduce the spread of the virus which causes AIDS not by 10 percent, not by 50 percent, but by a 100 percent, and we can do it now, without any recourse to a testing and quarantine program more like something...