"There is a whole range of problems that have been with us in spite of AIDS," Hiatt says. "Insurance, confidentiality, sex education, drug abuse--all of those problems have been with us. AIDS has put them into sharper focus."

Makadon says the conference series will also study the problem of treating intravenous drug users and will investigate ways to extend special medical care programs beyond the gay community.

The Institute has also received funding from the Fogarty Institute of the National Institute of Health to support a fellowship fund which will bring AIDS researchers to Harvard from Africa and East Asia. This grant supports efforts by the new AIDS organization to relieve the dearth of health care workers qualified to treat AIDS patients, Hiatt says.

In addition, the Institute will co-sponsor a Boston conference with the American Society on Law and Medicine on the topic of health care professionals and AIDS. The conference is being scheduled as a tribute to World Day on AIDS, which the World Health Organization of the United Nations has set for Dec. 1.

Current Research

Although efforts for integration between various Harvard schools are nowhere near completion, researchers in different faculties have been studying a variety of AIDS-related topics, which will later be collected under the Institute's organizational umbrella.

Clincal research at the Medical School, for example, is focused on the testing of new drugs in AIDS patients and in patients who are infected with the HIV virus--which causes the disease--but do not yet display the symptoms of AIDS, according to Dr. Martin Hirsch, who is co-director of the Center for Clinical Care, another branch of the Institute.

"We're working on drugs that affect the growth of the virus," Hirsch says. Over the summer, Med School researchers discovered that a natural protein, which they can synthesize chemically, inhibits growth of HIV in laboratory cultures by preventing the virus from attaching to cells. The drug, called CD-4, is now being tested in people for the first time.

Clinicians are also continuing to study the chemical AZT, which has been successful in prolonging the lives of AIDS patients.

Although the University this month introduced a program to market the research of Med School professors, members of the AIDS Institute Policy Board say that this will not have much effect on AIDS research or the new Institute.

"I don't think [that plan] would have any effect because the Institute is a group of free standing, non-profit individuals," says Dr. Jerome Groopman, who co-directs the Center for Clinical Care with Hirsch.

"Any inter-faculty endeavor is complicated, but I sense that because of this public health problem, people are putting aside their personal ambitions," said Elkan R. Blout, dean for academic affairs at SPH.

In addition to the many medical projects going on, professors at the Kennedy School of Government and the Law School are dealing with the complex social and legal aspects of the disease.

Lecturer in Public Policy Mark Kleiman, who is the Insitute's liaison at the K-School, says this year he will continue to study methods of reducing transmission of the fatal disease.

Kleiman says he is focusing on pre-marital testing for HIV, reduction of heroin use and improving prison policies toward incarcerated drug addicts and AIDS victims as methods of reducing spread of the disease.