CONFERENCE REPORT, PART I

The headline story from the Sixth International Conference
on AIDS is that (as expected) no "blockbuster" advances were
announced. But behind the headline, this Conference produced
much useful information -- more than any previous meeting. Few
reporters, scientists, or physicians can look through all the
information presented; therefore many potentially useful
developments may be lost, and never be reported in the general
press or even in scientific journals.

During the Conference we focused mainly on examining and
photographing poster presentations, and talking with people we
met in the poster aisles. Many important oral sessions had

scheduling conflicts with other meetings, so we bought audio
tapes. The most convenient single information source remains the
Conference abstracts, about three thousand of them published in a
three-volume set. Although the abstracts could not be changed
after January, the "bottom line" results reported seldom changed
between then and June, so the abstracts remain useful. They are
generally well organized into topics, easier to read than in
previous years, and have subject and author indexes.

We plan to examine thoroughly two of the four tracks of the
Conference -- Basic Science (Track A), and Clinical Science and
Trials (Track B) -- seeking reports we believe could be useful to
our readers. We will cover the other two tracks, Epidemiology
and Prevention (Track C), and Social Science and Policy (Track
D), only sporadically. We are now looking through the voluminous
Tracks A and B information to pick out potentially useful items,
and group them by specific opportunistic infection, particular
HIV treatment, or under other practical headings. We expect our
next few issues to be largely devoted to this Conference, but we
cannot be sure, since issues of AIDS TREATMENT NEWS are not
planned in advance but cover whatever seems most important at the
time.

We are also following political developments concerning the
Conference. Some of them raise issues about the fundamental
contract between government and the governed. We have chosen to
wait to see what develops on these matters, and to focus on
scientific and medical information for now.

For this issue we are lucky to have the report from Dr.
Marcus Conant, below, on some of the major Conference
developments as seen by one of the country's leading HIV
physicians.