United States studies involving AZT, and conducted on more than 12,000 pregnant African women, are being funded by The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of the pregnant HIV+ women being tested, it is alleged, are being given placebos instead of AZT although it has been shown that AZT, taken by pregnant women, often prevents HIV infections in their newborns. In some cases, according to watchdog medical observers, pregnant African women were not given the AZT, but, being treated as experiment fodder instead, were given a placebo. The participating women were from South Africa, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Tanzania.

The Public Citizen Health Research Group blew the whistle Tuesday, calling the tests on African women "unethical" inasmuch as U.S. doctors were not attempting to prevent all infections but to watch and see how many placebo mothers will give birth to HIV+ babies. Sidney Wolfe, the watchdog groups' director, insists that U.S. Government behavior on this matter is as vile as any scandal that has erupted within America's scientific experimental camps since World War II. He demands that the Health and Human Services Secretary, Donna Shalala, insure an immediate delivery of AZT to those women in the African tests who are not presently receiving it.

Michael Grodin and George Annas, medical ethicists from Boston University have also made public a letter they have sent to Secretary Shalala. It says the experiments are "in clear violation of all the major international ethical guidelines."

FIRST AIDS BITE DEATH? THE MORRISON/ HUTTO CASE

Reports have resurfaced about Naomi Morrison, an HIV+ prostitute in West Palm Beach Florida, who is presently serving a 10-year prison term for aggravated battery and robbery, and who stands to be charged with murder, inasmuch as the man she assailed, 92-year old Elmer Hutto, tested HIV+ for the virus following Ms. Morrison's bite and died in January with complications from pneumonia. He is the first person believed to have died from such a bite. Ms. Morrison's gums were said to have been infected and bleeding at the time the bite occurred.

The period following Elmer Hutto's death hosted no immediate announcement because the Palm Beach County medical examiner's investigation took three months to complete sophisticated DNA tests that were required. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the strain of HIV needed for a match between Morrison's and Hutto's had been found.

The jailed Ms. Morrison's 10-year sentence was passed after she pleaded guilty to aggravated battery on a senior citizen, as well as robbery and burglary. Palm Beach County Prosecutors are presently talking with investigators, but the state attorney's office says that there will be no word as to whether Ms. Morrison will be charged before mid-May.