Word: essex
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Especially hopeful news came from the laboratory of Dr. Myron ("Max") Essex at the Harvard School of Public Health. Addressing a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Washington, Essex announced that he, together with colleagues in Senegal and Tours, France, had isolated a new virus that is "closely related" to the AIDS virus but has several significant distinguishing traits. The virus, which was isolated from blood samples taken from Senegalese prostitutes, is structurally similar to the AIDS virus but even more closely connected to a virus that infects certain African monkeys. Says Essex: "We believe...
...most exciting feature of the new virus is that it appears to be harmless. In the lab, says Essex, it behaves much like the AIDS virus, infecting the same immunological cells (helper T cells) but without the "dramatic killing action" of its lethal cousin. None of more than 50 people infected with the virus have developed any symptoms of AIDS. Thirty have been followed for more than a year and have remained healthy, but, says one of Essex's collaborators, Francis Barin of the virology laboratory of Bretonneau Hospital in Tours, "we must wait for more time to pass...
Shortly before Essex revealed his discovery, a group of French and Portuguese researchers announced a related finding. At a conference in Lisbon, Dr. Luc Montagnier of Paris' Pasteur Institute disclosed that his team too had found a missing-link virus, apparently closer to the simian virus than it is to the human AIDS strain. As in Essex's study, the new virus was found in the blood of West Africans -- in this case, two men from Guinea-Bissau, which borders Senegal. Both men, however, were suffering from the symptoms of AIDS. "It seems to be the same disease; there...
...Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute each claims to have been the first to discover the AIDS virus. Bickering aside, both new findings help confirm the theory that the AIDS virus evolved from a microbe that commonly infects African green monkeys, apparently causing them no harm. Essex's team identified the monkey virus last year and speculated that it had first spread to humans who ate monkey meat or were bitten by the animals. Somewhere along the line, Essex hypothesizes, the virus mutated into the lethal AIDS-causing form. His newly discovered strain might be one of several intermediate...
...unknown reason, fail to protect them. And in light of the changeability of the AIDS virus, the vaccine would have to offer immunity against an almost infinite array of variant strains. No virus has presented vaccine makers with more formidable challenges. But given the lightning pace of discovery, says Essex, "we will likely know within a year or two whether or not a vaccine will be feasible...