The AIDS Epidemic • 1981-1987 • 1988-1990 • 1991-1993 • 1994-1997 • 1998-1999 • 2000 • 2001 Selected Articles • 1981 • 1982 • 1983 • 1984 • 1985 • 1986 • 1987 • 1988 • 1989 • 1990 • 1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999 • 2000 • 2001 Additional Information Resources Video Index Acknowledgments The Dead Zones: AIDS in Africa Back to Main

The AIDS Epidemic:
1998-1999

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1998: Pushing Back
16,432 deaths

January 13
AIDS Group Urges New York to Start Reporting of H.I.V.
The Gay Men's Health Crisis, the nation's leading AIDS service agency, is reversing its position and calling for New York doctors to report H.I.V.-positive people to the State Health Department.

February 4
Study of H.I.V. Family Tree Pushes Back Origins
An analysis of a blood sample preserved since 1959 from the oldest documented case of infection with the AIDS virus called H.I.V.-1 shows that the first such infections probably occurred in people in the late 1940's or early 1950's.

March 27
Disease Control Agency Urges Wider Use of H.I.V. Blood Tests
Concerned that an estimated 250,000 Americans do not know they are infected with the AIDS virus, Federal health officials urge wider use of blood tests.

April 14
The Doctor's World: AIDS Research Yields Clues Linking Viruses and Cancer
When AIDS was first recognized in New York in 1981, it was not as a viral infection but as Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare type of cancer.

May 26
Scientists See a Mysterious Similarity In a Pair of Deadly Plagues
In a provocative report, scientists at the National Cancer Institute say they have found that a genetic mutation that protects against the AIDS virus.

June 4
F.D.A. Authorizes First Full Testing for H.I.V. Vaccine
The F.D.A. has given a California company approval to conduct the world's first full-scale test of a vaccine to prevent infection with the AIDS virus.

July 5
AIDS Meeting Ends With Little Hope of Breakthrough
A series of reports about new problems with anti-AIDS drugs and setbacks in vaccine trials left many participants thinking that their best hope against the epidemic was the strategy they had since it began: prevention.

July 26
AIDS Brings a Shift on Breast-Feeding
Countering decades of promoting "breast is best" for infant nutrition, the United Nations is issuing recommendations intended to discourage women infected with the AIDS virus from breast-feeding.

August 19
In 1997, AIDS-Related Deaths In Prison Fell to 14-Year Low
The number of AIDS-related deaths among New York State's prison population hit a 14-year low last year.

September 25
Wave of Laws Aimed at People With H.I.V.
Reflecting a growing frustration and fear about AIDS, legislators around the country are passing an increasing number of laws intended to protect the public.

October 29
2 Studies Dash Hope of Reducing Complex Regimen of AIDS Drugs
Two new studies have undercut scientists' hopes that people infected with H.I.V. could avoid a lifelong regimen of taking a drug "cocktail."

November 24
Dismaying Experts, H.I.V. Infections Soar
AIDS virus infections worldwide have risen 10 percent over the past year, showing a disturbing lack of progress in prevention, the United Nations AIDS Program in Geneva said.

December 4
For Unlucky Few, Gene Spurs AIDS Stampede
Scientists have discovered why some people who are infected with the AIDS virus have a rapid downhill course, becoming gravely ill and dying within a few years.

1998 Article Index

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1999: New Directions, New Frustrations

February 16
Study Finds H.I.V. Infection Is High for Young Gay Men
The first large-scale study of H.I.V. infection among young gay men in New York City has found that large numbers have become infected with the virus in the last two years.

February 18
Two Reports Criticize Prisons on H.I.V. Policy
Despite a decade of scathing reports and government audits, the New York State Department of Correctional Services has failed to provide adequate H.I.V. prevention and health services.

April 20
After 17 Healthy Years, Hope of 'Safe' H.I.V. Dies
The ultimate dream of AIDS researchers is to find a nonvirulent strain of H.I.V. and turn it into a safe, effective vaccine.

May 29
San Francisco Again Debates Over Bathhouses
In a city still in an official state of health emergency after 26,000 reported cases of AIDS and 17,800 deaths, a movement is growing to allow the reopening of bathhouses where men can meet and have sex in private cubicles.

June 6
For Subjects in Cornell's Haiti Study, Free AIDS Care Has a Price
Many Haitians who visit the clinic are both patients and subjects of U.S.-financed medical research, and circumstances that are bad for their health are sometimes best for research results.

June 8
Researchers Seek Volunteers to Test a New AIDS Vaccine
Newark and New Jersey have begun casting their nets for test subjects for the world's first full-scale clinical trials of an AIDS vaccine.

June 28
Study Says Gay Men Reducing Levels of Risky Sexual Behavior
Gay men in New York City have significantly reduced their levels of risky sexual behavior, and the number of men infected with the AIDS virus has dropped sharply over the last 15 years, city health officials said in issuing findings on Sunday from the largest survey ever of gay men's sexual health.

July 13
In Africa, a Deadly Silence About AIDS Is Lifting
Earlier this year, AIDS became the leading killer in Africa, a mere 18 years after the infection was first recognized. But if political and religious leaders had responded with effective public health programs much earlier, they might have prevented hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths.

July 15
New Therapy Reduces AIDS Passed to Fetuses
In an advance that promises to significantly reduce the incidence of AIDS in children in developing countries, American and Ugandan scientists have found a simple new way to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the AIDS virus that also is less costly and markedly more effective than the standard therapy in the third world.

July 24
Condoms for Women Gain Approval Among Africans
The female condom, seldom used in the West, is catching on in South Africa and in many parts of the developing world, slowly becoming an important new weapon in the fight against the AIDS epidemic.

July 29
Drifter Says He Had Sex With Up to 300
Nushawn J. Williams, the drifter from Brooklyn who officials say may have infected more than a dozen young women and girls in upstate New York with the virus that causes AIDS, now says that he may have had sex with as many as 300 women.

August 31
Focusing on Prevention in Fight Against AIDS
Death rates from AIDS in the United States slowed again in 1998. But the rates are no longer falling as rapidly as they did from 1995 to 1997, after the introduction of combination drug therapy, health officials said Monday at a meeting in Atlanta.

September 1
Much More AIDS in Prisons Than in General Population
The prevalence of AIDS among prisoners in the United States is five times that of the general population, and the rates for some other sexually transmitted diseases are even higher.

September 7
AIDS Outbreak Feared for U.S. Tribes
Some health experts say they fear that AIDS is about to explode among the 500 tribes in the United Sates. Last year on the Navajo reservation, for instance, AIDS cases grew by 25 percent to the current 101 cases, health officials said.

September 9
Makers of AIDS Drugs Struggle to Keep Up With Market
As the profile of those who have AIDS broadens -- until the mid-90's, it was overwhelmingly gay urban men but is now increasingly women, Hispanic people and blacks -- drug companies are scrambling to introduce AIDS drugs to new types of patients.

October 19
New Tack: Halt H.I.V. Soon After Exposure
Frustrated by the continued spread of H.I.V., a growing number of AIDS doctors are trying out an experimental treatment: an application of drugs meant to abort infection in a person who was recently exposed to the virus through unsafe sex.

October 20
Court Rejects Giuliani's Policy on AIDS Benefits
New York's highest court ruled on Tuesday that the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani had created illegal obstacles for people with H.I.V. or AIDS to obtain public assistance.

November 24
More African Women Have AIDS Than Men
AIDS has long been considered primarily a men's disease. But on Tuesday the United Nations reported for the first time that more women than men were infected with the AIDS virus in Africa, the site of the vast majority of such infections in the world.

November 30
New Book Challenges Theories of AIDS Origins
Is AIDS a disaster inadvertently brought on by humans that arose from early testing of a polio vaccine in Africa in the 1950's? This provocative theory seemed far-fetched when it first came to public attention in an article in Rolling Stone in 1992.

December 17
Shift in Money and Message as Minorities Take On AIDS
The changing ethnic composition in people with AIDS reflects the broad, fundamental shift in the role of minorities in policy making and fund-raising to fight AIDS across the country. The executive offices and boards of broad-based AIDS organizations look increasingly diverse.

December 28
Vending Machines Enlisted in AIDS Fight
Endeavors to make preventive tools available to those that might be reluctant to seek them out in clinics or doctors' offices has the support of two studies in the December issue of The American Journal of Public Health.

1999 Article Index

2000