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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 5, 1993                   TAG: 9302050137
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Newsday
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

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AIDS IMPACT COULD FADE, REPORT CLAIMS

Despite widespread attention to AIDS during the past decade, a new national report says the epidemic is becoming increasingly concentrated in groups with little economic or political clout and may eventually drop from general public awareness.

The AIDS epidemic, it concludes, may have little permanent effect on the institutions of society and on the average American.

"If the current pattern of the epidemic holds," the report says, AIDS "will `disappear,' not because, like smallpox, it has been eliminated, but because those who continue to be affected by it are socially invisible, beyond the sight and attention of the majority population."

That pessimistic outlook is contained in a report released Thursday by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, a group chartered by Congress to advise the federal government on science.

While the disease first became prominent in the gay community, which led the pressure for more AIDS research and medical resources, the epidemic has been shifting into "marginalized" populations, primarily intravenous drug users and their sexual partners, the report said. "Many geographical areas and strata of the population are virtually untouched by the epidemic and probably never will be," the report said.

The study was quickly criticized by some AIDS specialists, who said it could help divert attention from the disease and hamper prevention programs.

"The language in this report is rather inflammatory to a certain degree," said David Eng, a spokesman for the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York. He said the report could "further perpetuate that myth of `us' vs. `them.' "

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