Soviets Seek West's Help on AIDS

WASHINGTON--Two years ago Soviet officials were in the midst of a vigorous international campaign of disinformation about the U.S. Army's supposed role in the spread of AIDS. This week top officials from the American and Soviet national academies of science and medicine are scheduled to meet in Moscow to discuss cooperative scientific ventures between the two countries, including possible collaboration on immunological and vaccine research that could help in the fight against AIDS. It is too early to tell whether that Soviet reversal is a result of party leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost or simply the latest example of competing factions at work within the state bureaucracy. Observers caution that, even in the glow of last month's summit meeting, those Soviet leaders seeking closer scientific ties with the West have yet to demonstrate that they have won over the rest of the government. But regardless of the ultimate fate of bilateral cooperation, Soviet attitudes since AIDS first appeared paint an interesting picture of how the government tackles an important health research issue. The disinformation campaign proposed that the human immunodeficiency virus was created at Port Detrick, Md., as part of the military's biological warfare program, and was spread worldwide by American servicemen. The propaganda campaign stemmed from the assumption that the Soviet Union could remain safe from a disease that at first was confined to Africa and various Western nations. That assumption proved to be incorrect, however, and with its first reported cases the Soviet government began to confront the realities of AIDS. That decision meant looking to the West for help. Last April the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Joint Committee for Health Cooperation met at NIH. It was the first meeting in nine years for the committee, formed during the height of dénté in the early 1970s but rendered inactive by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the suppression of the Solidarity movement in Poland. Several months earlier NIH Director James Wyngaarden and Surgeon General C. Everett Koop visited Moscow to invite proposals for scientific collaboration. One of the subjects the Soviets wished to discuss was AIDS. The first clinical description of AIDS in the Soviet Union appeared in the May/June 1987 issue of Immunologiya. The article described four cases of AIDS-related complex, often a precursor to the disease. In June the Soviets began to purchase HIV lysate from the West to prepare large numbers of ELISA-type diagnostic kits. In August the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued a decree intended to control the spread of AIDS. It called for mandatory testing of "high-risk groups" and the expulsion of any foreigners who tested positive for HIV antibodies. It mandated eight-year prison sentences for anyone who knowingly spread the disease. The number of active AIDS cases and HIV carriers in the Soviet Union is not known. Last March Victor Zhdanov, head of Moscow's Institute of Virology, identified 32 cases in the country, only two of which involved Soviet citizens. In November, however, the Soviets reported 47 AIDS-related deaths since last summer. Despite the apparent low number of cases (20 persons were identified in a Moscow screening, all African students), the government has launched a major campaign. It expects to operate 300 anonymous, walk-in testing centers by the end of the year. The Soviets also appear determined to use deportation and prison as barriers to further spread of the disease. Samuel Thier, president of the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., said last month that he hopes to meet with Valentin I. Pokrovsky, the new president of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences, during his visit to Moscow. Thier's visit is part of the second meeting of top officials from the U.S. and the Soviet Academy of Sciences, an exchange set up in 1986 by U.S. Academy President Frank Press and his Soviet counterpart. Thier said that immunology and vaccine development were potential areas of mutual cooperation. There are signs that the Soviets may be reconsidering their disinformation campaign. In August Pokrovsky told a Moscow audience that "the majority of leading specialists agree that central Africa has to be considered the birthplace of AIDS." But U.S. officials have made it clear that the propaganda must end before collaboration can begin. In the past NIH and the State Department have even rejected Soviet proposals for joint studies of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in primates because of the close link between that disease and HIV in humans. McSweegan, a microbiologist, is a AAAS fellow at the U.S. State Department.

Soviets Seek West's Help on AIDS

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