This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Carl M. Harris, PhD
Edward Rattner George Mason University Fairfax, Va

JAMA. 1990;263(8):1067-1068.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Arno et al¹ estimate a cost of approximately $5 billion (1989 dollars) for a prospective program of early intervention involving antiretroviral treatment and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia prophylaxis for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pre— acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) seropositive patients in the United States.

We would like to raise some questions about the validity of two aspects of the authors' calculations, namely, the decline in caseloads for 1989 through 1991 and the adoption of a 50% access-to-treatment level. The General Accounting Office, in its June 1989 report entitled "AIDS Forecasting," analyzed 13 national forecasts of HIV/AIDS and asserted that a common deficiency of all forecasts was underestimation of the numbers of AIDS cases being projected; a conclusion reached in that report was that most forecasts needed adjustment upward by 50% to compensate for various forms of systematic undercounting.

The growth in cumulative AIDS cases is the most . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?