The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MARGARET WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Jim Lehrer is off. On the NewsHour tonight the UN ways easing the impact of sanctions against Iraq; the Internet industry calls for restricting children's access to smut; doctors search for treatments for the Hepatitis C virus; and the UN offers an update on the AIDS crisis. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday. NEWS SUMMARY

MARGARET WARNER: United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan today suggested increasing the amount of oil Iraq can sell to buy food and humanitarian items for its people. In a written report Annan said the Iraqis were facing serious nutritional and health problems. The 15-member Security Council must decide this week whether to renew the oil for food program, which expires Friday. The current program lets Iraq sell $2 billion worth of oil every six months and spend it under UN supervision. Annan didn't propose any specific new amount. In Washington, White House Spokesman Mike McCurry had this to say about the situation.

MIKE McCURRY, White House Spokesman: Our quarrel is not with the people of Iraq. It is with Saddam Hussein, and Saddam Hussein, irrespective of what we do to take care of the children of Iraq, needs to comply with UN Security Council resolutions and stop attempting to do things that deceive the international community. One reason why one has to be somewhat suspect about where those proceeds go and be sure that there is a monitoring mechanism in place is because of his pattern of deception.

MARGARET WARNER: In Baghdad Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammad Saeed Al-Sahaaf said his government would refuse to renew the oil for food program unless it is administered differently. We'll have more on the Iraq story after the News Summary. The 10th Annual World AIDS Day was observed today amidst reports that the worldwide spread of the disease is wider than originally thought. Observances included a candlelight vigil in London, a demonstration of decorative umbrellas in Seattle, and a reading of the names of AIDS victims in New York. In Washington, a children's AIDS research group honored First Lady Hillary Clinton. The UN reported last week that 31 million people worldwide are now believed to be infected with the HIV virus. Brian Atwood, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, spoke today about how AIDS is affecting children in 23 countries.

BRIAN ATWOOD, Administrator, AID: We are projecting, based on our studies, at a minimum that 41.6 million children by the year 2010 will be without one parent or both parents. The implications of this in terms of the human and social costs are rather extraordinary.

MARGARET WARNER: We'll have more on the worldwide AIDS epidemic later in the program. In Haiti today United Nations troops handed over the job of protecting the island's security to local Haitian police. The UN's three-year peacekeeping mission in the Caribbean country expired at midnight yesterday. The UN troops are scheduled to start leaving Wednesday. The UN force replaced U.S. troops, who arrived in September 1994 to dismantle the island's military dictatorship and reinstate the nation's freely elected president. The United States shifted its stand today on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It did so at the opening of the global warming summit in Kyoto, Japan. The U.S. delegate to the 10-day summit offered a proposal to allow the world's 34 industrialized nations to reduce their emission levels by different amounts. About 1500 delegates from 150 nations are attending the conference. They're trying to strengthen a 1992 treaty by making emission reduction goals legally binding on the developed countries. This afternoon the President said the U.S. will not be pressured into signing a treaty he feels is unfair.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The goal we have suggested for Kyoto would require a much greater effort from the United States than from the other developed countries in the next few years because we've had so much more growth in the last five years than the other developed countries. So that if you use 1990 as a base year, let's say, instead of 1995/1997, or some earlier year, it's the year that most clearly puts the burden on us since we've had so much more growth than our other developed partners have since that period.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Clinton said Vice President Gore will travel to Kyoto next week to reinforce the U.S. position. The nation's major Internet service providers today announced voluntary steps to help keep young users from accessing adult-oriented sites through their computers. The announcement came at a summit of industry executives and government officials here in Washington. American Online and the Walt Disney Company said they would launch a campaign to educate parents about computer software that filters out sexually explicit material. These companies and others also said they would cooperate with law enforcement agencies investigating child pornographers and stalkers on the Internet. We'll have more on the story later in the program. The Pentagon isn't preparing sufficiently for the most likely threats of the 21st century, including terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. That was a key conclusion in a report released today by a congressionally chartered panel of defense experts. The panel also recommended a greater emphasis on high technology warfare and faster action to close unneeded military bases. The panel was created last year to provide an alternative to an internal Defense Department review. In economic news today the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose nearly 190 points, closing above 8,000 for the first time since the stock market slide began in October. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Iraq oil story, limiting Internet access, hepatitis C, and an AIDS update. FOCUS - FOOD FOR OIL

MARGARET WARNER: First tonight, proposals to ease the impact of international sanctions on Iraq. We start with some background from Kwame Holman.

KWAME HOLMAN: The United Nations economic sanctions against Iraq have been the focus of rising public anger in Baghdad in recent days. Yesterday, Iraqis paraded coffins said to contain the bodies of children who have died from starvation and lack of medical care. The United Nations so-called "Oil for Food" program was designed to blunt such a crisis. But the UN acknowledged today the troubled program has failed to prevent widespread malnutrition. Some demonstrators blamed the United States, not the UN or Saddam Hussein's regime.

SPOKESMAN: It is not because of the regime. It is because of the stand of the U.S.A. against the regime and the people in Iraq.

KWAME HOLMAN: Also yesterday Iraqis threw stones at UN officials responsible for dispersing food and medical supplies.

MOHAMMED SAEED AL-SAHHAF, Foreign Minister, Iraq: I understand why we, the Iraqis, are angry and frustrated. But I will not approve such a behavior.

KWAME HOLMAN: The UN's Oil for Food program is a modification of the sanctions regime against Iraq. The UN banned Iraqi oil exports after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The lack of oil income ruined Iraq's economy, leading to widespread shortages of food and medical supplies. Hardest hit were children. In response, the UN agreed in 1995 to allow Iraq to sell up to $2 billion worth of oil every six months and use the proceeds to buy food and medicine for its people. Some of the funds also must be used to pay for UN inspections of Iraqi weapons sites and to compensate victims of the 1991 Gulf War. But implementation of the program was delayed until last year, and since then, it has been fraught with administrative and logistical problems. In his report on the Oil for Food program released today UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, "It will be necessary for us to increase the amount of Iraqi oil sold so that we can bring a better basket of food to the Iraqi people." A United Nations agency estimated recently that 4500 Iraqi children die every month from starvation and poor medical care and nearly a million children under age five are malnourished. Annan's report says the problem now affects all segments of Iraqi society. The proposed expansion of the Oil for Food program comes against the backdrop of the ongoing tension between the U.S. and Iraq over Iraq's efforts to bar Americans from the international teams inspecting Iraqi chemical and biological weapons sites. When Iraq allowed the resumption of the inspections with American inspectors included, U.S. officials insisted it was not in return for any promise to ease sanctions. Yesterday, however, U.S. ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson said the U.S. was willing to see the Oil for Food program improved.

BILL RICHARDSON, US Ambassador to the United Nations: ["Meet the Press"] First of all, Saddam Hussein doesn't care about his own people, but the United States is ready in the United Nations in an oil for food resolution to find ways that the Iraqi people get food and medicine. We're ready to look at that program, see if the delivery system can be improved, get the UN to make it work better.

KWAME HOLMAN: Later yesterday, Richardson went further.

BILL RICHARDSON: And we're ready to improve it. If it takes an increase, we'll consider that very seriously.

KWAME HOLMAN: In his report today the UN Secretary General stopped short of recommending how the Oil for Food program should be expanded. The decision on what to do now rests with the UN Security Council. It is expected to take up the matter this week, when the current Oil for Food program expires.

MARGARET WARNER: We get two views now on Secretary General Annan's recommendation. Phebe Marr is a senior fellow at the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies. And Edmund Ghareeb is an adjunct professor of Middle East Studies at both American and George Washington Universities. He is the co-author of the book War in the Gulf 1990-91. Is Kofi Annan right? Is it time to let the Iraqis sell more oil?

EDMUND GHAREEB, American University: Certainly. I think it's time to let the Iraqis sell more oil. I think it's also time to consider lifting the sanctions on Iraq. The people of Iraq have been paying a very heavy price for those sanctions. As we have seen, there are about 4500 children are dying every month. One of every four Iraqis is suffering from malnutrition. The prices have gone up about 5,000 percent since the beginning of 1990. A kilogram of meat or a tray of eggs costs something like 3,000 Iraqi dinars, which is the official pay of an Iraqi for one month. So this is a serious problem. And the question is: What's the purpose behind this? If the purpose is really to oust Saddam Hussein, then the sanctions, and to hurt Saddam Hussein, then the sanctions have failed. And they have failed miserably. If the purpose of the sanctions, however, is to decimate Iraqi society and destroy its infrastructure, destroy the middle class, then it has succeeded very well. What we are seeing is Saddam--the people have become much more dependent on the government than before because of the sanctions regime.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. How do you see it?

PHEBE MARR, National Defense University: Well, I would agree that it's time to get more food and help for the Iraqi people but definitely not time to lift the sanctions. And I'd like to say here that the--there are many purposes to the sanctions. It isn't simply--perhaps not at all--simply to get Saddam Hussein, and it certainly isn't to decimate Iraqi society. Let me just say that under Resolution 986, Oil for Food, which has a number of restrictions on it in the way the money can be spent and distributed in Iraq, under that resolution I think it's time to expand the amount of oil that can be sold--I would say even to expand what the money can be used for. Right now it's used for food, medicine, and other necessities of life. I think in time it could be expanded to include some of the infrastructure--pure water, perhaps electricity, even education, help on education. The reason it should come under this resolution is that we're certain that it doesn't go into the hands of Saddam Hussein, who can then spend it on weapons of mass destruction or whatever.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now, explain briefly why, if keep it under this resolution, as you say, it can't--Saddam Hussein doesn't get ahold of the money.

PHEBE MARR: Well, because there are a number of restrictions. First of all, it's put into an escrow account. Second of all, a--

MARGARET WARNER: The money--

PHEBE MARR: The money that comes from the oil does not go directly to the government of Iraq. It's put into an escrow account. Then to make sure that the money buys food, medicine, or whatever it's supposed to buy, the contracts have to be approved by a sanctions committee, the UN sanctions committee, under Resolution 661. That's why it's called the 661 Committee. And then when it gets into Iraq to make sure that it goes to the people--not the military or some other purpose--there are over 150 monitors in Iraq overseeing the distribution system that, in fact, the Iraqi government has supplied.

MARGARET WARNER: Why wouldn't increasing the amount, as Ms. Marr is suggesting, but keeping it under the sanctions regime, why is that not enough, in your view?

EDMUND GHAREEB: I think there are two issues here. I think, on the one hand, there is the immediate question, and that could be--probably it could be resolved by providing more oil for sale. The problem, however, has to do with something else as well, and this is that on one hand, while we have seen recently that there are the 2 billion for oil, in reality what Iraq is getting is something like 1.23 billion and the rest, so every Iraqi citizen--

MARGARET WARNER: But that's because the rest goes either to support the weapons inspection program, or to reimburse Kuwaitis.

EDMUND GHAREEB: Compensation--as to reimburse Kuwait. The second factor that's involved here also is that the average Iraqis are getting only something like 25 to 27 cents a day. That is in Central and Southern Iraq. And this is not really sufficient for the care of the people. The second thing is that there should be a separation of the economic sanctions, which have been devastating the country, devastating its civil infrastructure, and that is very dangerous not only just for the regime. It's not affecting the regime. The regime is as strong as it has always been, but it's threatening the Iraqi structure, the Iraqi society, the Iraqi state. There is a great deal of fear and concern in the region about what's going on in Northern Iraq, about Turkish incursions into Northern Iraq, that this might threaten the whole fabric of Iraqi society. And what we might end up seeing--something like what we saw in Yugoslavia and Bosnia, what we see in Iraq will make that look like a picnic.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me stay with the Oil for Food program just another couple of minutes and ask you, UNICEF--the UN organization--said that this Oil for Food program, which was designed to sort of ameliorate the impact of sanctions in a year, has essentially done nothing for children and infants, in terms of malnutrition and deaths. Why hasn't it?

PHEBE MARR: Well, first of all, I'm not so sure that it has done nothing. We have actually gotten some food and medicine into Iraq. Perhaps we need to get more under the 986 Resolution. The question is: How is it distributed when it gets there? Why is it being slowed up? Now the Iraqis are accusing the United Nations of a sanctions committee. There may be just a lot of bureaucracy, but, frankly, Saddam Hussein, himself, stopped this program halfway through it, in the second tranche, didn't renew it for a while. There's a lot of frankly difficulty when it gets into Iraq as well. Moreover, I think I'd say that we have to be careful about the statistics coming out of Iraq. It's very, very difficult to do independent research there, whether you're NGO, whether you're UN or whatever. And many of the statistics that are being used come out of figures provided by the Iraqi government. So I don't want to comment on the accuracy of all these things, except for the fact that we have to be skeptical, I think, of all specific figures. The situation is not good, and certainly we need to get more help to the Iraqi people, but let us a put a certain amount of skepticism on actual figures coming out of Iraq.

MARGARET WARNER: What's your view about why--whether it is working and if it isn't, why not?

EDMUND GHAREEB: I think by actually statements that are coming from the U.S. Government the Iraqi Government is providing a fair way of distributing the food to the people. Part of the problem, I think, in terms of the food, about 95 percent of the food is getting into the country; however, the problem comes when it comes to medicine. Medicine, for example, only about 25 percent of the medicine is getting into Iraq. Part of it is because of the hesitations on the part of the sanctions committee. Part of it is bureaucracy perhaps, as Phebe has mentioned. And I think even the human rights coordinator for the UN--Dennis Halliday- -has been very critical of the commission on--the committee on this issue. So obviously, there has to be more done in this area of humanitarian assistance, humanitarian aid, and perhaps a decoupling of the inspection from the sanctions regime.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now, could you--now we move on to maybe the larger question, which you've suggested, which is: Why not ease the sanctions, at least partially, even now? Russia has even suggested that, rather than, I think the current UN view is until Saddam complies with all of the weapons resolutions, nothing will be lifted.

PHEBE MARR: I support that fully.

MARGARET WARNER: You support Iraq's view?

PHEBE MARR: No. I support not easing the regular sanctions regime but getting the help to the Iraqi people under 986. Frankly, 986 is a very flexible resolution. We can expand the amount of oil so we can expand the amount of food and medicine. We can expand the kinds of things that go under but making sure that Saddam Hussein does not get unfettered use of his oil resources, that's what this is all about. It is partly a PR campaign from Iraq to get the full sanctions regime off. What people have to understand, what that means is that he gets to sell the oil; he gets to decide how it's spent. It's in his control, and nobody has any control over how it's spent. Here is a man--

MARGARET WARNER: Meaning what?

PHEBE MARR: Meaning that he can spend it on weapons of mass destruction, on missiles, on his support system, on the military, and so on. He may spend some of it on getting the food to the population, but there's no--there's no limit on his ability to spend it on weapons of mass destruction and the military if he has unfettered use of that oil resource. So what we should do is definitely get more help to the Iraqi people under the resolution which provides some controls over that, rather than allowing him to have use of the oil money.

MARGARET WARNER: Is that a danger--give him unfettered use of the oil money?

EDMUND GHAREEB: I think there's no doubt that Saddam Hussein is seen as a leader who's not trusted by some of the other countries in the area, but I think the issue is bigger than that, and we have seen recently, as a result of the recent crisis, that no one is supportive of the--or very few people are supportive of the use of force against Iraq. There is a question of this impact of the sanctions that some people in the area are calling this as a weapon of mass destruction on the Iraqi people. There's no doubt that there are legitimate issues, legitimate concerns, when it comes to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The question is: What is the best way of achieving this? And that is the way that it's been done so far, is this really, has it accomplished anything? We are in the sanctions regime now for seven a half years since they were imposed. The commission has been working in Iraq for this--since the end of war. And so far nothing has been accomplished. So there has to be a new way--new attitudes to achieve this objective.

MARGARET WARNER: Nothing accomplished?

EDMUND GHAREEB: No, I don't think--unfortunately, it's taken a very long time, and, indeed, the Iraqi people have paid for that. But we have gotten his nuclear program under control. We've gotten a good bit of the weapons of mass destruction under control. Finally, we've got recognition of Kuwait and the borders. We might have some disagreement over whether the border should or should not have been recognized, but, nevertheless, these have been achievements. It's been like pulling teeth because it's taken so long to get compliance on this. The sanctions or the desire to get the sanctions has in some sense contributed to that.

MARGARET WARNER: What do you say to the comment Mike McCurry made today, which is if he wants to get rid of sanctions, it's very easy, all he has to do is comply with the UN weapons resolutions? What's his game? I mean, why doesn't he?

EDMUND GHAREEB: Oh, I think there's no doubt that Saddam Hussein's gains--primarily he wants to stay in power. That's the first and the most important thing. But I think the issue is beyond that. It is what policy is there for Iraq. It seems that the dual containment policy has been collapsed. There are Russian, French, Malaysian companies have challenged the U.S. policy on Iran. At the same time there seems to be only one lateral containment of Iraq and the only thing we know how to deal with them is either by force or threat of force. The peace process appears to be collapsing so there are a lot of people in the region who are raising questions about U.S. policy, and the purpose behind that policy, and whether or not there is a coherent policy toward Iraq and toward the Middle East as a whole.

MARGARET WARNER: Briefly, why do you think he's not willing to make the trade-off the UN wants him to make?

PHEBE MARR: Well, I think Edmund is absolutely right. He wants to stay in power. I think he wants those weapons for multiple purposes, to protect himself against the United States should they want to take the kind of military action that's been talked about in the press, protect himself against Iraq. That is the real threat, protect himself against Israel, and maybe to intimidate some of his neighbors eventually.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you both very much. FOCUS - FILTERING SMUT

MARGARET WARNER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight limiting access to the Internet; Hepatitis C; and an AIDS update. Spencer Michels begins our coverage of the Internet story.

SPENCER MICHELS: With the increasing popularity of the Internet, especially among children, parents and others have been concerned that young people have easy access to a wide range of pornography available on line. They have pointed out that it is a relatively easy maneuver for children to call up salacious material at home or in libraries--simply by searching for key words like "porn" or "sex." In Gilroy, California, Sandy Zappa speaks for many angry parents.

SANDY ZAPPA, Parent: I have like nine affidavits signed by adults who have seen obvious minors pulling up pornography.

SPENCER MICHELS: In February of 1996 Congress passed--and the president signed--the Communications Decency Act, which made it a crime to transmit "indecent" material to minors on line. But last June, the Supreme Court overturned key portions of that law--a move cheered by some civil libertarians and librarians, who argued that restrictions on the Internet amounted to curtailment of free speech. Many objected--and still object--to filtering devices--commercially available software that blocks access to some web sites that contain objectionable material. Martin Gomez is director of the Brooklyn Public Library.

MARTIN GOMEZ, Brooklyn Public Library: It would limit people's ability to have access--I'm thinking of adults in particular--to have access to information let's say about breast cancer or sexual harassment because my understanding of the way that these filtering systems work, is that they're keyed in on key terminology.

SPENCER MICHELS: Despite those sentiments, some family groups and lawmakers are still demanding controls over what gets on the net. Today, several Internet industry leaders--hoping to head off legislation or strict regulation--announced their own voluntary plan to limit what is available to minors.

JERRY BERMAN, The Center for Democracy & Technology: Rather than the government playing the role of parent, the Internet tool kit that we are advocating allows parents and users and communities to enforce and to choose their own diversity of values.

SPENCER MICHELS: The industry proposal calls for developing new filtering technology parents can use to block access to sites children may visit; establishing a public service campaign to inform parents about the danger of pornography on line; and creating a national hotline to report incidents of cyber porn.

STEVE CASE, America Online: Ultimately, the only real solution is parental empowerment and parental education, so, therefore, a legislative solution may not create the kind of comfort that people seek and actually could, inadvertently, do some damage to dealing with the problem in a substantive kind of way.

SPENCER MICHELS: But some critics don't believe that voluntary industry efforts will be effective. Republican Senator Dan Coats of Indiana introduced a bill last month requiring all commercial web sites carrying material harmful to minors to block access or face criminal penalties.

SEN. DAN COATS, [R] Indiana: We provided very stiff fines in the Communications Decency Act, which I'm introducing. That hopefully will become the basisfor which we can send a very strong signal to the providers that if you get caught, if you do this and you get caught, it's not going to be, oh, well, we're sorry, we won't do it again; there's going to be a very stiff penalty, including a jail sentence.

SPENCER MICHELS: Any new law restricting Internet access--like the Communications Decency Act before it--is certain to be challenged in court.

MARGARET WARNER: Phil Ponce takes the story from there.

PHIL PONCE: Joining us to explain today's announcement and its implications is Steven Levy, who as senior editor covers the Internet for Newsweek Magazine. And, welcome, Mr. Levy. In lay terms, what is the thrust of what the industry is trying to do?

STEVEN LEVY, Newsweek: Industry believes the solution to this problem of easy access to salacious materials is to give parents the tools to block children from getting at these things, so what they're doing is they're putting together sort of a mosaic of different solutions, different options for parents that try to put things on their computers to keep kids away from the bad stuff.

PHIL PONCE: And that's what is referred to as filters?

STEVEN LEVY: Roughly, yes, that was the main means by which they wanted this.

PHIL PONCE: And how do these filters work?

STEVEN LEVY: Well, they work in a number of different ways. Essentially what you have here is a vast newsstand, the biggest newsstand imaginable, and these filtering programs kind of fill the role of a guy behind the counter who keeps children from the objectionable material in some of the publications that parents don't want their children to see. Unfortunately, it's not as easy to do that on the Internet as it is in a newsstand. There's literally millions of different potential web sites, places that kids can go on the Internet, and it's very difficult to look at those and then decide which are objectionable. You could look for key words but sometimes you wind up blocking much too much. There was a famous case about a year ago on America Online where breast cancer support groups were blocked from these filters because it had the word "breast" in it, and they thought that was objectionable. So people on America Online couldn't get help with breast cancer support. So you have to refine, you know, the ways you use this, and you know, perfection really is sort of an ideal that people will have to keep reaching for in those things.

PHIL PONCE: And, Mr. Levy, is there any evidence to suggest just how much adult-oriented material is working its way into the computer screens that children have access to?

STEVEN LEVY: Well, you have to figure that without any blocking at all children have access to everything on the Internet. And that includes a lot of adult material. The real bad stuff kids can't get really without a credit card. In practice, you have to be fairly dedicated to look for the horrible pornography that you hear about. There's a lot of software pornography, which is available without a credit card that kids can get at very easily unless the parents install these filters, and in some cases even filters won't stop a dedicated child from getting at these things if a kid wants to see it.

PHIL PONCE: How different will things be if some of these initiatives actually go into place?

STEVEN LEVY: Generally, the kinds of initiatives that have been announced today--and these are initiatives on behalf of some of the people involved in the Internet industry like America Online, or Microsoft, or AT&T. These things are incrementally better than what we have now. American Online, for instance, introduced an icon which, you know, hit sort of a panic button. If something goes wrong online, they can call for help, and also they put the filters a little more prominently in the sign-up process, so parents would be more aware of it as an option to put on the software so kids wouldn't get at it. So it makes it a little better, and I think overall what this conference is doing is saying, look, we can do it; the industry can move things along incrementally so parents will have an option to keep their kids away from this stuff.

PHIL PONCE: Please clarify, though. Who is actually doing the blocking? Is the burden on the companies, or is the burden on the parents?

STEVEN LEVY: Ultimately, the burden is on the parents, and I think that's the message that these companies want to give. There is a responsibility--it's implicit upon these companies that these companies generally accept that it's up to them to let parents know that this stuff is out there, and it's up to them to make it easy enough so even an adult can use. One very big problem is that kids, by and large, are more conversant in technology than their parents are. So when you talk about a program to keep a child from something on the Internet that a parent has to install, you've got a problem right there because in a lot of households it's the kids who teach the parents how to use it, not the other way around.

PHIL PONCE: And for people who don't follow the Internet, or who maybe are not real conversant with computers, explain briefly, what is a chat room, and what are the dangers that a chat room might pose?

STEVEN LEVY: All right. Here's a problem that really isn't being addressed very fully because it's a much tougher problem to crack. Chat rooms are places where people go on the Internet to converse in real time. It's sort of a giant party line, where you can get people from all over the world to basically, you know, virtually meet in a certain site and communicate with each other. And that's where some real dangers lie. You hear about these cyber predators, and it's a fact that there are adults who try to lure under-aged, you know, children on- line and perhaps set up meetings with them later on, and, you know, just as predators in the real world do, these people often focus on kids with self-esteem problems and troubled homes, kids maybe having problems finding their own sexual identity, and try to find these kids on-line. It's easier to find them on-line than it is in schoolyards, and maybe set up meetings for them elsewhere. A lot of these filter programs really don't do anything to filter what goes on on the chat rooms. What you have to do then is have parents decide whether to block chat rooms totally or, you know, go to places where they know the chat rooms are monitored full-time sometimes by people working for the service.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Levy, this is largely an industry-drive initiative. What kinds of government steps is the industry trying to avoid?

STEVEN LEVY: Well, what they're trying to avoid is a reprise of the Communications Decency Act, which we saw, you know, in the piece preceding this. That was something which was so far ranging that uttering an expletive on-line, that people use every day, made one liable for a jail sentence literally. So the Supreme Court struck that down and Sen. Coats, as you said, is suggesting something called the "Son of CDA," which is again an attempt to mandate certain sorts of restrictions on speech, which inevitably would affect not only what's available to children but the way adults communicate with each other. And I think the civil liberties groups are particularly upset about that because they feel that the Internet is the greatest thing, you know, since sliced bread when it comes to adults communicating with each other, with free speech in general. And they would hate to see that great communications bazaar limited on the basis of what children can say.

PHIL PONCE: Even with these new tools, if they are implemented, and if parents take advantage of them, is there still some risk involved for parents to have--to have their kids having access to the Internet?

STEVEN LEVY: Well, there is really, and ultimately it just comes down to parents instructing kids to do the right thing, and they can't rely 100 percent on these filters. The filters can be very helpful, especially when--as they are on a place like America Online--they're easy to use. You can click them on. They prevent access to certain things, but ultimately you know your kids are going to get into a chat room. Things can happen. Kids can use E-mail and communicate with other folks, and ultimately, the whole struggle when a parent lets a kid solo on the Internet, so to speak, is making sure the kid is responsible enough to do this alone, just as you wouldn't let a kid get behind the wheel of a car unless you trusted the kid to drive the car and follow the rules of the road.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Levy, thank you very much for joining us.

STEVEN LEVY: My pleasure. FOCUS - HEPATITIS C

MARGARET WARNER: Next tonight, a little known virus that is fast becoming the No. 1 cause of liver disease in the United States. Fred De Sam Lazaro of KTCA-St. Paul-Minneapolis reports.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Denise Carter may look healthy, but she's battling a dangerous disease called hepatitis C. For years before she knew it the virus was scarring her liver with cirrhosis. Now, she may need a liver transplant within 10 years. Hepatitis C has left her too exhausted to work.

DENISE CARTER: I sleep as much as an infant. Fatigue is a huge problem for me, so I sleep anywhere from fourteen to sixteen hours a day. That's naps and then twelve hours a night--twelve to fourteen. I need to look at my energy like a bank account, so if I have something planned next week, I need to start gathering my energy and resting and resting up for that activity.

DOCTOR: [examining Denise] Is there any tenderness here?

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Like many other patients, Carter had no symptoms when she was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1993. She got the news from a routine blood test. Now, she's one of almost four million chronically-infected Americans. Ten thousand a year will die from it, and researchers fear that within a decade more people will die from hepatitis C than AIDS. Unlike AIDS, however, hepatitis C has gotten very little attention. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop wants to change that with a public awareness campaign. He's concerned that many of those who have the hepatitis C virus don't even know they're infected.

C. EVERETT KOOP, Former Surgeon General: The sad thing about it is as soon as the virus enters the body, it begins a relentless destruction of the liver, and sometimes the patient who's infected with the virus of hepatitis C does not know that he is infected until 10 years or maybe 15 go by, and then he begins to have liver failure from cirrhosis, and sometimes at 20 years patients develop as the first symptom hepata cellular carcinoma. So it's a nasty disease that people know very little about because of its insidious onset.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Hepatitis C was an unknown before 1990. That was the year a screening test for the virus was developed. But even after researchers could tell when the virus was present in the body, not much happened because no effective treatment was available. But with new therapies slowly coming on line medical experts are re-thinking their positions.

SPOKESMAN: What we've got to do is decide what we think ought to happen. At that point we'll let the agencies, the White House, and Congress, the lobbyists, whoever, battle it out.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: This summer a federal Blood Safety Committee called on government to undertake the huge effort of notifying people who may have received tainted blood from a transfusion before the test was available. The committee, headed by Medical Ethicist Arthur Caplan, said the time to act is now.

DR. ARTHUR CAPLAN, Bioethicist: Until recently, there weren't any cures and any treatments for hepatitis C. But now the appearance of Interferon, even the availability for some people of liver transplant makes it possible to do something about people who really have a bad case of this disease. And that shifts the occasion too. Before people said, what's the point of looking back if there's nothing to do? Now, it seems as if there may be real reason to look back.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But even for those who know they have the disease there still are no easy answers. Just one year before Denise Carter was diagnosed, her brother, Mel Cisneros, died from hepatitis C. Cisneros had been sick for years, but by the time for hepatitis C was available his body had been so ravaged by the virus it rejected two liver transplants.

DENISE CARTER: It was five years August. Five years August.

DEE CISNEROS: Yeah, I know, but the pain's still there. It just doesn't go away.

ROGER CISNEROS: Yeah. We still miss him.

DEE CISNEROS: We sure do. We're happy we still have you.

DENISE CARTER: I'm kind of sticking around a while.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Mel Cisneros's death made Carter's diagnosis particularly hard for her parents, Roger and Dee Cisneros.

DEE CISNEROS: It was total shock. And I just--I--how can this be? I mean, why was God doing this to us? You know, why? Immediately I felt it was a death sentence. I lost a son. Now, why am I losing another child? Is this going to happen to all my children? It was devastating. All I could do was cry.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Hepatitis C remains a little understood virus. The most identified means of transmission is through needle sharing, making IV drug users the most "at risk." But up to 40 percent of all hepatitis C sufferers say they've never used drugs and have no idea how they got the virus. Mel Cisneros did experiment with IV drugs, but his sister, Denise Carter, did not. Carter originally assumed she'd caught the virus from tending to her sick brother. But the amount of the damage to her liver suggested she had had it for some 20 years. Carter's mother felt enormous guilt.

DEE CISNEROS: The first thing I felt was what's going on here. You blame yourself and you brow beat yourself, and you wonder what did I do wrong, and we finally got to the place that do not look for anyone to blame but just to see what we could do to save her.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Carter has given up trying to find out how she got the virus. While questions remain about transmission, it is known that getting a tatoo, sharing a razor, or toothbrush, snorting drugs, and piercing the body are all ways to catch the virus. Medical professionals exposed to blood also face a higher risk, as do people who received blood transfusionsbefore 1990. But unlike AIDS, sexual transmission is rare. Doctors are now encouraging routine blood tests for those in known risk groups, but determining how someone got the virus is complicated by the length of time the virus takes to show up.

C. EVERETT KOOP: Only about 25 percent of people can remember having anything. They thought it was a touch of the flu, or a GI bug, or something like that. And unfortunately, when the virus invades the human body, the body's immune system is very ineffective at getting rid of the virus.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: While 85 percent of those with hepatitis C will develop chronic infection, recent studies show that a small number--up to 15 percent--are able to recover fully without any treatment. Dr. Coleman Smith, a Minneapolis liver specialist, says the severity of the disease also varies.

DR. COLEMAN SMITH, Liver Specialist: It takes many years before severe liver disease occurs in many people. And sometimes it takes so long that the patient may have died of some other unrelated illness even at a very advanced age without any evidence of significant liver disease, but certainly no doubt in some people it can progress to severe liver disease, end up with cirrhosis, a need for liver transplant.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In fact, hepatitis C has become the most common reason for liver transplants in adults in this country. Even so, many in the medical community are not fully informed about the condition. While looking for the best medical care, Carter says she interviewed five doctors who knew less than she did about the disease.

DENISE CARTER: There was the perception in the medical community that it wasn't that serious, but no one could tell me that at that point. I had watched my brother die from it. No one could tell me, oh, you're going to die from something else, or don't worry about it.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But early medical intervention and life style changes could help, according to Dr. Koop.

EVERETT C. KOOP: If you don't get the disease early, you'll lose a lot of the options you have for treatment. But one of the things a person should know, for example, if hepatitis C positive by test, is that their livers are in danger, and they certainly shouldn't add to that danger by consuming a lot of alcohol.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: By altering her lifestyle, Carter has stabilized her condition. She is relying on alternative treatments, such as herbal teas, acupuncture, and Eastern therapies. She made the changes after the only drug now available for treatment, Interferon, failed to work for her. In fact, Interferons--human proteins that are used to fight the virus--only work in about 15 percent of those infected. But Carter is looking into new drug trials, which combine Interferon and another substance called Riboviron, which have shown encouraging results.

SPOKESPERSON: Hepatitis C is--it can progress rather slowly.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: This phone bank in Colorado is part of an effort to get the word out to people who have the disease and don't know it.

SPOKESPERSON: And, as you can see, the only way that it can be diagnosed is through a specific blood test.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: They're training operators on how to take calls from the 30,000 people who will be contacted this month by the Red Cross to tell them their blood donations had been rejected in the past because they carried hepatitis C. Dr. Richard Davey is with the Red Cross.

DR. RICHARD DAVEY, Red Cross: Now we've learned more about this illness, more about this virus, and so we've had an opportunity to send new letters, a series of additional information to these donors that can be, we feel, very helpful to them in terms of learning more about their illness, learning more about treatment or therapy that might be available to them, and getting them in touch with physicians that might give them appropriate information.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Ann Jesse's hepatitis C support organization is overseeing the project, which will provide referrals to physicians and support groups nationally.

ANN JESSE, HEP C Connection: They're going to be scared. You know, now we can talk to these people and try to help them in any way that we can because they're going to be terrified. But the information is there now, and it wasn't prior to four years ago.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The Red Cross's effort to contact 30,000 people who were rejected as donors is just a tip of the iceberg. Bioethicist Caplan says notifying all those who may be at risk from transfusions they received before 1990 is going to be a massive undertaking.

DR. ARTHUR CAPLAN: We could be looking at a major problem ten, twenty years down the road. If we've got four million infected people, two hundred and fifty thousand of which may have come from earlier blood transfusions in the 1980's, that's a real challenge for us, and one that the society has got to prepare its resources to expend on to deal with.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: A challenge to find the money for testing, for counseling, and for treatment, and a challenge to convince the rest of the public that the nation's blood supply is now safe to use. UPDATE - FIGHTING AIDS

MARGARET WARNER: Finally tonight, an update on the AIDS situation worldwide. Elizabeth Farnsworth has that story.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Today's 10th annual observance of World AIDS Day comes as the United Nations and the World Health Organization say many more people have been infected than previously estimated. According to a new joint report nearly 31 million people have the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, 30 percent higher than previous estimates. Only one in ten of those affected is aware of it, and 2/3 of those infected live in subsaharan Africa. To tell us more we're joined now by Dr. Stefano Bertozzi, coordinator of policy, strategy, and research for the United Nations AIDS program. Thanks for being with us. Dr. Bertozzi, this figure is quite a bit higher than the UN thought even a year ago. What's changed?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI, UNAIDS: It's a frightening figure, I agree, and unfortunately, it reinforces the fact that we're far from a situation where the AIDS epidemic is over. What's happened is that we've reassessed the figures, and we had believed last year that approximately 8,500 people were being affected every single day. This year our estimate is 16,000 people being infected every day. Much of that difference is because we thought that the epidemic was slowing down in Africa, and, in fact, the opposite seems to be true, especially in Southern Africa. There have been dramatic increases in the proportion of people infected.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How bad is it in subsaharan Africa? What are some of the figures?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: It's very variable from country to country, but some of the worst figures are coming out of Southern Africa. In Zimbabwe, for example, in the major urban centers, women going in for prenatal care--30 percent/40 percent--50 percent of women infected, and one border town with South Africa, seven out of ten women presenting for prenatal care were infected with HIV, but if you look at the continent as a whole, it's about 7 1/2 percent of adults that are infected.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And why is it spreading so rapidly? This is basically through heterosexual contact, right?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: It is largely through heterosexual contact, almost entirely, but recognize that any place that you've got heterosexual spread, men and women are being infected, and in Africa, it's about one to one, men to women, which means that many children are also being infected from their mothers. In fact, last year more than 1/2 million children were infected with HIV.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell us about places where there is some success in confronting HIV. Uganda has had some success, right?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: Exactly. And, in fact, that contributed to our relatively--our under estimates last year. We saw the HIV epidemic starting to level off in Uganda, and, in fact, in young people, especially adolescent girls and boys, we've seen lower, significantly lower incidence rates of HIV in Uganda, realizing Uganda was one of the first countries to be affected in Africa and was a country that really confronted the AIDS epidemic and instituted prevention programs, and we're seeing the payoff now in changed behavior and in reduced incidence.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And are some of the other countries trying to do the same things Uganda has done?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: Absolutely. There are prevention programs in many countries, but unfortunately, prevention programs that are not to the scale needed, given the size of the epidemic. And that's especially true, as we're seeing now, in Southern Africa, in countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, and South Africa. In South Africa we now estimate that--actually the government of South Africa estimates that about one in ten adults are infected with HIV.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What has to be done? What did Uganda do?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: It's prevention programs that work on multiple fronts. To start with, about 50 percent of the infections are in young people between the ages of fifteen to twenty-four, so it's essential we get prevention programs working that are targeting that age group. We need to make sure that in schools and out of school that young people have the knowledge and the skills to deal with HIV infections and to prevent themselves from becoming infected. But it has to go much beyond that. It has to go beyond that to the societal level. It has to be a discrimination and stigma that people with HIV infection face in countries around the world has to decrease so that it's okay for people to have HIV infection and be public about it and raise the level of awareness in the communities and in the society. There has to be care available for people so that that's another motivation for people to find out whether they're infected or not.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And the problem in Africa is that the care and especially the drugs are so terribly expensive, is that right?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: Well, there's been very hopeful news, as I know you know, over the last couple of years in the U.S. and in Europe because of new therapies that for a substantial proportion of people living with HIV offer real new hope. Unfortunately, these are so expensive that most people in developing countries don't have access. In Africa, in particular, they're largely out of reach, and that creates a very different situation obviously than we're facing here.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You're talking about in the United States these drugs are about $15,000 a year, right, which is considerably above what most people in Africa would be--would have access to.

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: It's at those prices completely unrealistic, absolutely.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about Asia? What's happening there? Thailand had such a high incidence of AIDS and Thailand has also had some success like Uganda, right?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: Well, Thailand was the place where the epidemic initially moved the fastest in Asia, and as you say, like Uganda, where the government really responded aggressively. Much of the AIDS epidemic was fueled by the commercial sex industry, and the government instituted a program called the 100 Percent Condom in the brothels. And that--that program working with the clients, working with sex workers, working with young people, has turned much of the epidemic in Thailand with the new infection rates in young people falling dramatically. The new military recruits have seen infection rates fall dramatically. Unfortunately, elsewhere in Asia the picture isn't nearly as optimistic. In Cambodia, for example, frightening new statistics. In India, the epidemic continues to climb. We estimate that there were between 3 and 5 million people infected with HIV now in India.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Dr. Bertozzi, why do only one in ten know that they have it?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: Well, you have to recognize that the situation with respect to access to testing is very different in much of the developing world than it is in the United States. Here people have largely access to testing if they want to find out if they're--if they're infected with HIV or not. There was also strong motivation here to know whether you're HIV-infected or not because there's successful treatments available if you are. The situation is very, very different in most developing countries. In Africa, very little therapy is available. Certainly, anti-retro viral therapy is largely unavailable. Same thing in much of Asia. And in that sense--in that situation, the motivation to be tested is certainly less. In addition, people don't have access to testing. They don't have a nearby testing center where they can go to be tested either, because it's too far away, because they can't afford to be tested, or because there isn't one available where they happen to live.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, there is some good news, isn't there, in the United States, the number of new cases dropped 6 percent last year, is that right?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: 6 percent. Exactly.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why is this good news happening in the United States? Is it because of the drugs that you talked about?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: Exactly. What we're talking about there is it's difficult to know. Hopefully, there is also some decreasing incidence, meaning new infections, but most of what you're seeing with the 6 percent drop is the result of the fact that people are healthier longer because of the drugs that are available in the U.S. And that's true also in Europe. It's true in Australia, but it's largely not true in most of the developing world.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And it's not true in the United States for black men and women, is that right? Those rates are way up.

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: Well, let's divide the question up a little bit.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Yes.

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: It's true, I think, in the United States, although, as you know, our work is mostly with developing countries, but in the United States minority and marginalized populations certainly have less access to care, less access to the drugs that you've been talking about, than is the case for non- minority populations in the U.S.. And you'd expectthe drop--a 6 percent drop, would, therefore, be less in those populations.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Dr. Bertozzi, are you worried that people have become complacent about AIDS, that because there was the thought that the corner had been turned on AIDS, people are not caring about it the way they did say five years ago?

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: Worried isn't strong enough. I'm seriously worried. I'm frightened about that because we're seeing a global epidemic that's accelerating, not slowing down, and our response globally has to accelerate, not to slow down. And I think you're absolutely right, that in some countries, where people perceive that a cure is around the corner, that that's causing people to let up. We need to do exactly the opposite because in this increasingly globalized world, with travel, with increasingly interdependent markets, we need to be worried about the global epidemic. And the global epidemic has now 30--almost 31 million people living with HIV--sixteen thousand new people a day. I mean, if you put that into the context of some of the other stories that we've been watching around the world recently, that's a staggering number, and it's one that ends up touching the United States even if most of the new infections are outside of the United States.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Dr. Bertozzi, thanks for being with us.

DR. STEFANO BERTOZZI: Thank you very much. RECAP

MARGARET WARNER: Again, the major stories of this Monday, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan suggested increasing the amount of oil Iraq can sell by food and humanitarian items for its people; the 10th annual World AIDS Day was observed amidst reports that worldwide spread of the disease is greater than originally thought; and United Nations troops in Haiti handed over the job of protecting the island's security to local police, ending their three-year peacekeeping mission there. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Good night.