Study: AIDS may hide for 60 years
■ In people taking
anti-viral drugs, the AIDS
virus could still lurk.
NEW YORK (AP) - The AIDS
virus might be able to hide undetected
for 60 years in people taking powerful
anti-viral drugs, says a study that
underlines a major obstacle to the bold
notion of curing ADDS.
“We aren’t going to be able to sim
ply wait it out,” said Dr. Robert
Siliciano, senior author of the study.
While the drugs can drive the
body’s amount of HTV down to unde
tectable levels, they can’t attack a virus
that lies quietly in cells. Such hidden
“reservoirs” of HIV have long been
recognized, and these new calculations
confirm the belief that they could har
bor the virus for a very long time.
Still, “this doesn’t mean a cure is
impossible,” said Siliciano, a professor
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of medicine at the Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine in Baltimore. It
means some additional therapy would
have to be created to eradicate the hid
den virus, he said.
Scientists have already started
studying that, as well as the alternative
idea of leaving reservoirs alone but
revving up the immune system enough
to kill any virus that emerges from
them.
Siliciano also stressed that the find
ing doesn’t mean that people who are
keeping HTV at bay with current med
ication will go on to develop AIDS. “As
long as they stay on the regimen they
may do perfectly well for a long period
of time,” he said.
The result is “a caution against
stopping treatment or thinking that
having an undetectable plasma virus
(in the blood) means there’s no virus
left,” he said.
Siliciano, with colleagues at
i1 ■■
Hopkins and elsewhere, describes a
study of 34 infected adults in the May
issue of the journal Nature Medicine.
All were taking the powerful virus-sup
pressing drugs.
Researchers sampled so-called
“resting” CD4 T cells from the
patients’ blood and used special detec
tion techniques to find HTV in them.
They then estimated how many cells
were harboring hidden virus at various
times over the course of treatment.
From that, they calculated how long it
would take for this reservoir of silently
infected cells to die off.
The best estimate was about 60
years. The result wasn’t a surprise,
given the results of earlier research,
Siliciano said. The period might be
shorter in some people, he said.
The work “probably codifies what
a lot of us have known for a while,” said
Dr. Roger Pomerantz of Thomas
Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
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Experts warn of
Y2K credit scams
Frauds play to computer-bug fears
WASHINGTON (AP) - When a
caller told Betty Mason he would
help make sure her credit card would
work after Jan. 1, she pulled the card
from her wallet and was ready to lis
ten.
But when he asked for her credit
card number and promised to send a
sticker that would make the card Y2K
compliant, she balked. Mason was
wise enough to avoid being taken, but
the Federal Trade Commission fears
others will lose money in this and
other scams tied to fears about Year
2000 computer problems.
“It’s really a new twist that some
one is going to cash in on,” said
Mason, of Warner Robbins, Ga.
“Someone is saying, ‘We’ll make
money off this Year 2000 thing.’”
Jodie Bernstein, director of the
FTC’s bureau of consumer protec
tion, said scam artists “move right in”
to exploit change or vulnerability.
The problems are not limited to
credit cards.
“The scams that are out there are
so diverse, there is no one fix-all type
of solution,” said Norman Willox Jr.,
president of the National Fraud
Center, a Philadelphia-based firm
that focuses on fraud prevention and
interdiction.
Consumers might see an Internet
ad to buy stocks from a company that
claims it has created products to
thwart the millennium bug.
Shareholders are assured big returns,
after the third quarter, when the
inventions hit the market.
In what Willox calls a “pump and
dump” scheme, consumers make an
investment only to have the business
- or the goods they produce - turn out
to be fake.
Another common scheme
involves con artisjs calling con
sumers and warning that they must
move their money into a separate
; bank account to protect it from mil
lennium bug foul-ups. Pretending to
be representatives from a bank, they
ask customers for their account num
ber to move holdings. Sure enough,
the money is transferred into another
account - one belonging to the caller.
“Obviously we’re concerned
about anyone using Y2K to scam peo
ple,” said Jack Gribben, spokesman
u
Its really
a new twist
that someone
is going to cash
in on”
Betty Mason
consumer
for the president’s Year 2000 council.
He advised people concerned
about the Y2K compliance of their
banks or credit card companies to
contact these institutions directly -
rather than responding to an imper
sonator who calls them and scares
them into giving out personal finan
cial information.
The Y2K bug occurs because
many computers programmed to rec
ognize only the last two digits of a
year may not work properly begin
ning Jan. 1, 2000, when machines
might assume it is 1900.
Because of the need to convert
machines and equipment to accept
this change, businesses and con
sumers are desperately searching for
specialists to adjust their systems. But
high demand and insufficient supply
of these experts creates a chance for
opportunists who pretend they can fix
the technology, says Willox.
Companies may not figure out
they’ve been scammed until after the
millennium, when their computers
fail, says Willox. In other cases, a
phony business operation will tout
easy solutions - such as a disk cus
tomers can buy and load onto their
computer for an instant remedy.
“As far as I know, there are no
fixes like that, but there are a lot of
people out there promoting them,”
Willox said.
The FTC is working with state
attorneys general and businesses to
raise awareness and skepticism
among consumers. For consumers
who are taken anyway, Bernstein said,
law enforcement is always an avail
able option.