Medicine: Slapping Down The Mosquito

Can mosquitoes, which carry such diseases as malaria and yellow fever, also transport the deadly AIDS virus? The question arose in 1985, when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta studied an unusually dense clustering of AIDS sufferers in the mosquito-infested area of Belle Glade, Fla. Last week the Atlanta Constitution stirred up the mosquito scare anew by publishing the preliminary findings of a research team sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Its tentative conclusion: the AIDS virus can indeed ride as a passenger on the blood-sucking mosquito.

To AIDS investigators, the reports of the virus in mosquitoes, bedbugs...

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