Nation IN BRIEF : NATIONWIDE : Study Urges Changes in AIDS Funding

Much of the $1.4 billion being spent on AIDS research is supporting studies that are at best marginally related to the disease, while some of the most promising avenues of investigation remain underfunded, said a review of the National Institutes of Health’s AIDS research program. The independent report, done for the NIH’s Office of AIDS Research, calls for major and in some cases surprising shifts in research priorities. It urges scaling back the federally funded effort to develop AIDS drugs because the drug industry already is doing much of that work and because drugs now appear less likely to have a long-term impact on the epidemic than vaccines and other prevention efforts.