Announcements

** Tat Inhibitor: Trial Seeks Volunteers

The only human trial of an important new class of anti-HIV drugs has begun and is now recruiting volunteers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This study, designed primarily to establish safe and potentially effective oral dose levels, will require a single eleven-day stay in the hospital; there are no followup visits. Volunteers will be paid for participation.

Volunteers must be 18 or older and have mild HIV-related symptoms.

The study is sponsored by Hoffmann-La Roche, and conducted by the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at Johns Hopkins. For background information on the drug, called RO 24-7429, see AIDS TREATMENT NEWS #127 (May 17, 1991) and #128 (June 7, 1991).

For more information about entering this trial, call Lynda Nerhood at 301/955-7703, or Lional Lewis, M. D., at 301/955- 3100.


** V International Conference for People with HIV/AIDS,
London, September 11-15, 1991

The Fifth International Conference for People with HIV/AIDS will focus on human-rights skills and workshops. It will be held at the Royal College of Art in London, September 11-15, 1991. The official languages of the conference will be English, French, and Spanish. The program aims to emphasize social interaction rather than formal talks.

A major focus will be "the empowerment of the individual living with HIV/AIDS and the finding of solutions to the violation of our rights as people living with HIV/AIDS. "

"The programme of the conference is designed to help participants to gain a clear understanding of the issues of human rights. We will be able to discuss violations in a confidential and safe setting which will enable us to develop skills in dealing with problems as individuals in our society, and using existing networks toward solving those problems. This will happen within planned workshops, multimedia sessions, and informal discussions.

"We would appreciate it if you or your organization would be able to put in writing any detailed information concerning human rights of individuals living with HIV/AIDS in your own country; this will help us in planning the workshops."

For more information, you can contact Don DeGagne at the Vancouver Persons with AIDS Society, 604/683-3381, or 604/683- 3367 (fax). Or you can contact the Conference directly in London, phone 44-071-792-0936, or 44-071-229-1258 (fax).


** Hemophilia: Annual Meeting of National Foundation,
Tampa, October 1991

The 43rd Annual Meeting of the National Hemophilia Foundation will be held October 8 through 12 in Tampa, Florida, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Workshops at the conference will cover a broad range of issues which concern the hemophilia community, including coping with HIV and AIDS, parenting children with HIV, and new developments in HIV therapies and access to them.

For information about registration and hotel accommodations, interested persons may call the Foundation at 202/628-1274. Registration discounts are available before September 9.


** Lyme Disease: Treatment Newsletter Published,
Buyers' Club Forming

People coping with infections of Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme disease or borreliosis), particularly people who also have HIV, will be interested in a monthly newsletter from New York which reports on the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease.

The newsletter is edited by Richard Lynch, who told us that many people with HIV, or chronic fatigue syndrome, could be experiencing undiagnosed Lyme symptoms, and vice versa. Unfortunately, the blood test for Lyme antibodies produces a high rate of false negatives. But if infection is found, it is treatable with antibiotics.

Richard has also helped organize a buyers' club in New York to help people with Lyme disease obtain experimental treatments from abroad. For information about the newsletter or the buyers' club, interested persons should call 718/273- 3740, or write to Lyme Treatment News, 17 Monroe Ave., Staten Island, NY, 10301. Subscriptions are $25 per year for health care providers, $15 for others.


** In Memoriam: Tom O'Connor

Tom O'Connor, a founder of the buyers' club movement and principal author of one of the early, and best, books on AIDS treatments, died of pulmonary Kaposi's sarcoma on July 27. He was 44.

When Tom, with co-author Ahmed Gonzalez-Nunez, published Living with AIDS: Reaching Out in 1987, he had had AIDS- related symptoms for seven years and been seriously ill in 1982 and 1983. For his own health, Tom began researching holistic and conventional treatments; he focused on nutritional approaches, partly because these were more accessible than other treatments. This research, systematically collected in well-organized files, became the basis of Living with AIDS. Although the book was published privately (Corwin Publications was named for the street where Tom lived), thousands of copies were sold. While most of the specific information has now been superceded, Living with AIDS provided a model of good judgment in how to go about making treatment decisions. Tom approached the task with few preconceptions, meticulously collected treatment information, and used it to make treatment decisions for himself.

Tom was one of the founders of Healing Alternatives Buyers' Club (now Healing Alternatives Foundation) in San Francisco. This group came together primarily to obtain generic AL-721, the "alternative" treatment of most interest at that time. It also began carrying standard vitamins, etc., often at prices 40 percent below those prevailing elsewhere at that time. The nonprofit structure, with a board made up primarily of persons with AIDS or HIV, gave the AIDS community a practical and trusted presence in the business world -- an alternative to other retail outlets which were seldom AIDS-knowledgeable and seldom in business for community service.

Despite worsening health, Tom traveled widely during the last several years, and gave public talks in many cities on AIDS treatment options.