Cadets face Safe toys challenge...page 4 advocated...page 5
T19H E 86
December
Vol. 85, No. 24
Wrestlers take fourth...page 7
VISTA
Thursday Edition
Central State University, Edmond, Oklahoma
Photographic Services: Tom Gilbert
Above: LeAnn Coyner (right) helps elementary school student Kenneth Burns make a paper chain at the President's Club Christmas Party for Underpriviledged Children 3 p.m. Tuesday in the University Center Ballroom. Left: Georgie Coker receives her presents from "Santa Claus" while Mat Maid Mandy Smith looks on.
Doctors, victim present viewpoints on AIDS By Dennis Ramsey Student Writer
"I would have never told the administration, or any of my professors, that I had AIDS, they might have thrown me out of school," said a former CSU student wishing to remain nameless suffering from the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
AIDS: myth vs. reality According to Steve Scott, a 1985 graduate in funeral service from CSU, this is the typical reaction of many AIDS sufferers. Scott, who has long been interested in the disease, said, "as far as research, my background was not medical, so basically my interests were emotional." Scott has worked with many patients in both Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Scott said, "since there is so much paranoia about AIDS being contagious through casual contact, there are very few people willing to help." Scott said he also has been involved in trying to get a hospice program similar to the one in Oklahoma City instigated in Tulsa. According to Scott, "unlike a hospital, where care is toward the patient surviving and getting well, a hospice is toward making the dying process more comfortable. The goal is not saving the life, just keeping the patient comfortable." Scott said he would like to see more funding for the hospice programs.
"Each community is having to go at it alone." Scott continued. "There is no national organization for getting one started, so it is a long process to get a hospice going." Scott said he feels if AIDS were not considered a gay disease, "we would be a lot further down the road on finding a cure." He said he also would like to see an awareness that AIDS is not a gay disease. "It affects a cross section of society and has proven to be a primarily heterosexual disease in other countries, like Africa," Scott added.
AIDS: victim's outlook "I did not know I had AIDS when I attended CSU between fall 1984 and spring 1985," the former CSU student and AIDS victim said. "I quit going to CSU because of unknown health problems." At the time, the student said, he was going through a series of tests for cancer. When he first went into the hospital for the cancer tests, he said, the doctors also ran an HTLV3 test. "The first time the doctors ran the test, it came up negative," he said. "However, after further HTLV3 testing with mixed results I was pronounced as having AIDS, six months after the first HTLV3 test." The student said he would not tell the administration that he had AIDS.
"I would not specify AIDS. I might specify an illness that would take time away from class," he said. "At the time I was going to CSU the public was not as well informed. I did not want to be thrown out. "You have to understand that a year ago it would have meant they would have asked me to leave the school." He said he hopes the administration, college professors and students now would know they can't get it (AIDS) from him, therefore keeping him in school. The former student said he would like to go back and finish school. "I do not know if I'd be going back to CSU or if I will choose another college that can better adapt to this problem (AIDS). "As far as actual AIDS patients at CSU, I don't think you're going to find that many with full blown AIDS. "You're going to find a lot of CSU students with the HTLV3 infection, and therefore they have not developed AIDS yet. He said he would like to see the CSU administration educate the professors about AIDS. "If the administration and the professors feel uptight around the person with AIDS and the student knows it, it is going to make it more difficult for the AIDS student. "As far as how the administration is going to handle it, it should be the same way the administration would handle someone with a
sneeze, you don't need to pay attention to it, it is not communicable." The student said he fells different now that he knows he has the disease. "I feel, in a lot of ways, I have had to mature faster," he said. "I also feel a sense of loss, sadness and abandonment. He said he hopes there will be a cure, and if not a cure then maybe something that would preserve the quality of life. "I would not want to see a cure if it could not bring some of the people (afflicted with AIDS) back to the way they were." He said he is not taking any of the available drugs for AIDS at this time, because they still cannot cure someone, or improve the constant quality of life.
AIDS: scientific aspect According to Michael Heiquist, an AIDS researcher, there has never been a vaccine against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus that causes AIDS. "There also has never been a vaccine against a virus that attacks the immune system itself, the very mechanism that vaccines are designed to stimulate," Helquist said. Heiquist explained that viruses are basically simple organisms, little more than a protein wrapped piece of genetic material. "Unable to reproduce, viruses seek cells in more evolved
organisms, such as humans, and use the reproductive mechanisms they find there to reproduce themselves," he said. Scientists are looking at genetic engineering to produce a single, effective vaccine that will teach the body how to kill the HIV virus, AIDS, Heiquist said. According to Heiquist, genetic researchers have taken two primary approaches to vaccine development. One uses synthetic materials and one uses sub-units of the virus. "The process for each is similar. Working with the (HIV) virus, scientists either use genetic manipulation to grow a key segment of the virus or use chemical techniques to manufacture the same segment," he said. In each case, the new piece of virus is then used as a vaccine. These vaccines work because they look and act like the real HIV virus, he said. This causes the body's immune system to be stimulated into killing any introduction into the body of the HIV virus that causes AIDS. Also, the vaccine cannot harm the body because it can not reproduce itself like the real virus does, he said. At this time there are over 31,600 cases of AIDS, affecting 74 countries, according to Dr. Jonathan M. Mann of the Geneva based World Health Organization. "It (AIDS) has reached epidemic proportions," Mann said.