Despite all those days of discussion, judging by the condensed program available in advance of the meeting, the organizers have ignored a critical aspect of AIDS research: the safety of the researchers who are trying to make it go away. As we reported in our last issue (THE SCIENTIST, .January 25, 1987 p. 1), it is not clear that current lab safety procedures offer enough protection against HIV infection, even then they are carefully observed. A two-year study of 265 lab workers, published in Science on New Year's Day, disclosed that one of them had become infected with HIV even though he or she-the worker remains anonymous-had no known risk factors and appears to have violated no safety procedures.
Now of course it may turn out that the infected really did do something, either inside or outside the lab, that led to infection by one of the obvious routes. The ...
