The gay men studied in the San Francisco hepatitis vaccine research during the 1970s again proved a singularly valuable tool in this research. In June, Don Francis put on his long Johns and ski parka to pull the tubes of blood he had collected from the 6,800 men for vaccine research. He selected 110 blood samples drawn in 1978 and about 50 taken in 1980. Only 1 person in the 1978 study had LAV antibodies, while 25 percent of the group studied two years later were infected. Since then, the infection rate had more than doubled. The retrospective testing bolstered the hypothesis that a new viral
...more
