The following showed up today on sci.med.aids.

In article <41…@sci.med.aids> SF AIDS Foundation
                                <b…@thecity.sfsu.edu> writes:

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>REPORT FROM THE FOURTH CONFERENCE ON
>RETROVIRUSES AND OPPORTUNISTIC INFECTIONS

>The following is an edited transcript of the BETA LIVE! conference
>call broadcast on January 26, 1997 from the Fourth Conference on
>Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections held in Washington, DC.

>BAKER: Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to this special edition of
>BETA LIVE! I’m Ron Baker, Editor-in-Chief of BETA, the AIDS treatment
>magazine published by the non-profit San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
>    Today’s teleconference is brought to you live from the
>Sheraton Washington Hotel in Washington, DC, where over 2,500 AIDS
>researchers, clinicians and community activists have for the last 5
>days been attending the 4th Conference on Retroviruses and
>Opportunistic Infections, to hear about the latest results of recent
>research on AIDS.
>    This annual meeting is widely regarded as the single most
>important AIDS research conference in the world, and has featured an
>impressive roster of scientific presenters, including luminaries such
>as Dr. David Ho, recently named Time magazine’s "Man of the Year" for
>his contributions to advancing our understanding of the dynamics of
>HIV replication and how best to suppress the virus.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

>    With me today to review the conference presentations and to
>answer your questions are Dr. Trip Gulick of New York University;
>Dr. Cal Cohen, Director of the Community Research Initiative of New
>England; and Dr. Harvey Bartnof, a long-term member of the San
>Francisco AIDS Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Committee and a
>frequent contributor to BETA magazine.
>[....]
>GULICK: I think all of us continue to be amazed by the whole concept
>of viral dynamics — that is, how many viruses are produced and
>destroyed every day, and how many CD4 cells are infected on a daily
>basis. The first presentations at this meeting, by Dr. Alan Perelson
>from Los Alamos and Dr. David Ho from New York, reviewed the current
>thinking on viral dynamics, and the numbers are truly astonishing.

        They’re astonishing because they’re not real.

>    In a person in a steady state without treatment, on the order
>of a billion new viral particles may be produced every day, and the
>average life span of these viral particles is about 2 days. That means
>that the virus in an infected person’s system is turning over very
>fast.

        "There are no such things as slow retroviruses, just slow
retrovirologists." — Prof. Peter Duesberg

>[...]
>COHEN:…Another important issue — and ongoing debate — is the
>competence of the immune system. We have been seeing increases in the
>number of CD4 cells, but the mystery has always been whether immune
>cell competence is growing. What if your CD4 cell repertoire has been
>depleted? What if you’ve got only 40 CD4 cells/mm3? Can your body no
>longer fight certain infections?
>    We have started to get some information on this, although it
>is still quite early. It appears that the first wave of new CD4 cells
>may be just increases in numbers of the types of CD4 cells that you
>already have…

        It’s trafficking, Stupid!

-Giacomo
 Giacomo’s Cabaret, http://www.panix.com/~jscutero