Possibility of New Virus Dominates AIDS Conference : Health: Moving speech by a victim of the disease ends gathering of thousands of experts in Amsterdam.

The eighth International Conference on AIDS ended Friday after six days in which news of scientific gains and epidemiological trends was upstaged by the startling possibility that a new and undetectable virus could be causing a baffling spate of AIDS-like diseases.

Despite hundreds of papers and presentations that covered a range of scientific, medical, political and sociological aspects of the deadly disease, reports about the possible new virus seemed to dominate the conference.

In a way, such a singular event seemed to underscore the very reason such global meetings--which bring together thousands of experts working in diverse areas of the field--are held, conference organizers said.

“There has to be some issue that everyone is talking about,” said the conference chairman, Dr. Jonathan Mann of the Harvard AIDS Institute. “The possible new virus is perhaps the most dramatic example of how information exchange helps to accelerate progress. . . . New questions were generated, and quite a different sense of what was happening emerged before our eyes.”

The closing ceremonies of the conference served as a moving and painful reminder of the dreadful human toll wrought by the escalating pandemic.

“When I realized I had AIDS, more than anything else I felt I was soon to fail the people I love,” said Janherman Veenker, a Dutchman suffering from the disease, who wore a small red ribbon pinned to his shirt symbolizing the hundreds of thousands of lives lost. “I wish I could prevent or soften their pain. . . . Slowly I discovered that that was beyond my capacities.

“Now we can share, but those I care about will be left behind,” he continued. “I know this reaction is common for someone who becomes aware of a terminal illness. It reflects my own fear to let go. It also reflects the pain and grief I felt when my friends died and left me behind.

“I want to remember and honor those who died,” he said, his voice breaking, “by living as well as I can.”

The cavernous hall exploded with sustained applause as he finished speaking, and thousands of people rose in tribute.

Reports of scientific advances that might someday help people like Veenker were tempered at the meeting by the notion that some new and as yet undetectable agent may be responsible for an AIDS-like condition in some people who test negative for the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. It is still far too early to know if this is the case.

But it became clear, as the meeting progressed, that AIDS experts and public health officials--despite their public reassurances--were mesmerized by the possibility.

“This meeting and all the attention has served to catalyze the problem . . . and has brought many new cases into the daylight,” said Dr. James Curran of the Centers for Disease Control, which has identified six cases of the new condition and this week issued a request that others be reported immediately to the agency.

“Before, CDC didn’t know about that many cases, and frankly, we didn’t know what the hell to make of them,” he added. “We still don’t know the answers to a lot of questions, but we know the phenomenon seems to be more common than we realized.”

As researchers began comparing notes on the strange new group of AIDS-like cases throughout the week, a scientific paper was released thousands of miles away by UC Irvine researcher Sudhir Gupta, who said he believed that he had found such a previously unknown virus to be associated with the disease.

“We don’t know what we have,” Curran said.

Curran and others stressed that there appeared to be no “clustering” among the known cases that would indicate that a transmissible organism was responsible. But others warned that it was premature to draw that conclusion.

“If you have something that takes years to develop, you won’t necessarily see the connection right away,” said Dr. Robert T. Schooley, an AIDS researcher at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

Schooley and others also emphasized that it was not unusual for one disease, or similar diseases, to be caused by more than one microbe, so this should not be surprising.

“A lot of different things, for example, can give you pneumonia,” Schooley said.

And, more important, “this does not mean that HIV does not cause AIDS. It just means that there may be another agent, or agents, that can cause a similar illness,” he said.

Dr. Mervyn F. Silverman, president of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, said he was concerned that the growing publicity would precipitate a public reaction that was out of proportion to the problem.

He compared the situation to that of a Florida dentist with AIDS who apparently infected five of his patients--the only known such instance of possible physician-to-patient transmission. That case inspired an intense national debate over whether to restrict the practice of HIV-infected health professionals.

“My fear is that people will begin thinking something is lurking out there--this terrible monster--when, in fact, it may be nothing more than a variation of what we’re already dealing with,” Silverman said.

Among other developments during the meeting:

* Despite encouraging reports in vaccine development, Dr. June Osborn, a virologist who chairs the National Commission on AIDS and is dean of the University of Michigan School of Medicine, told conference delegates that the development of an effective vaccine will not bring a stop to AIDS transmission or an end to the pandemic.

“Many think about a vaccine as something that when it happens, we can all relax,” she said.

No vaccine is ever totally effective, and it is extremely difficult to achieve mass immunization even when a good vaccine is available, she said. Moreover, those at especially high risk of infection are often those who have least access to preventive medicine, she said.

“Try to imagine the conservatives who don’t like sex education or needle exchange or condoms,” she said, “accepting the idea that their children would engage in sex and would need to have an HIV vaccination to immunize them against a sexually transmitted disease.”

* Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine announced that they have developed a new, highly sensitive and inexpensive test that can better determine whether infants are infected with HIV. The test is much more sophisticated and accurate than the one currently available, they said. It can distinguish between the mother’s antibodies to HIV--which are passed on to newborns and remain for many months--and the baby’s.