The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, an Iowa caucuses preview, Betty Ann Bowser reports; Iowa and other political matters as seen by Mark Shields and Paul Gigot; an update on an unusual AIDS treatment, Spencer Michels and Elizabeth Farnsworth handle the story; and an encore performance, Paul Solman at the Vermeer exhibit. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: A bomb exploded in East London today. It happened minutes after an Irish radio station received a statement saying the Irish Republican Army had ended its 17-month cease-fire. We have more in this report from Terry Lloyd of Independent Television News.

TERRY LLOYD, ITN: Docklands, close to the heart of London, and a totally unexpected terrorist bomb brings about bloodshed and chaos, and marks the end to a cease-fire in hostilities. It was a huge explosion centered at South Key Railroad Station, close to Canary Wharf Business Development. At the center of this complex is Britain's tallest tour block. Friday night and the offices were emptying; people were heading home. Within the hour, it was flooded with police and members of the anti-terrorist squad as news came through that the IRA had allegedly ended their cease-fire. It had long been feared by special branch officers that if the line of violence scrapped their side of the peace process, then it would be the mainland and the capital which would become the target. It's a modern part of central London. Most of the buildings, offices, and apartments are made up of glass panels. Tonight, the streets are littered with shards of glass. Windows shattered up to two miles away as the bomb exploded. Police described it as a substantial device, adding weight to theories it was the work of the IRA. Whoever the bombers were, they calculated the target and timing extremely well. This is close to the heart of the city of London, and the bomb went off very close to rush hour. It was clearly designed to cause maximum chaos. London hospitals have rehearsed time and time again to cope with terrorist outrages. Tonight, their contingency plans were tested. Several people have been seriously hurt. Another 120 caught up in the blast were described as walking wounded. More casualties are still arriving at hospital tonight. Come daylight, when it all sinks in, scores more police officers will be drafted in to join forensic experts who will painstakingly examine the debris and the damage.

MR. LEHRER: British Prime Minister Major issued a statement calling the bombing an atrocity. He asked the IRA to condemn it. Sinn Fein, the politic wing of the IRA, said it was investigating the radio broadcast claiming IRA responsibility. In this country today, the severe flooding continued in the Pacific Northwest. At least four people have died, two others are missing. We have more from Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Broadcasting.

LEE HOCHBERG: At midnight last night, citizen volunteers raced to build a plywood buttress atop the wall that protects downtown Portland from the Willamette River. Four inches of rain and melting snow had raised the river level 12 feet in two days. City officials feared the river would pour over the seawall last night.

MARTY HOREIS, Volunteer: We'll have this thing reinforced. If it goes up over the top, there's nothing we can do.

MR. HOCHBERG: This morning, though, there was sunshine, and the river crested just shy of the new wall. Water lapped at the doors of restaurants down river from the wall, and some waterfront parks were submerged under feet of water, but save for thousands and thousands of sandbags, downtown Portland was normal. Towns outside Portland are not so lucky. The Portland suburbs of Milwaukee and Oregon City are waste-deep in water. High water cut off from the rest of the state several towns on Oregon's Pacific Coast. Statewide, more than 15,000 people were evacuated. Seven hundred fifty roads were either closed or partially blocked by water or mudslides. Many saturated hillsides in Portland's residential areas gave way. Two people were injured when a condominium complex slid down a hill.

PATRICIA HONEYCUTT, Storm Victim: It almost killed me. I was pinned in a walkway. I had to crawl up through the mud to jump to the sidewalk as the building broke off and hang on with that as the second slide came in over the top of me and tried to bury me in the fissure down below, and I got out.

MR. HOCHBERG: Though no more rain is predicted for the next several days, it may take days for the waters to recede. President Clinton has declared 17 counties in Oregon and 13 in Washington State as disaster areas.

MR. LEHRER: In the Presidential campaign today, the Republican candidates were all in Iowa for next Monday's important caucuses. According to the poll, Senate Majority Leader Dole is the front- runner, Steve Forbes, Pat Buchanan, and Senator Phil Gramm are in a tight race for second. Senator Richard Lugar, Lamar Alexander, and Alan Keyes are also contending in Iowa. We'll have more on the story right after the News Summary. At the White House today, President Clinton said he would ignore a requirement that military personnel with the AIDS virus be discharged. That requirements is part of the Defense Authorization Bill the President plans to sign tomorrow. Mr. Clinton said the provision is unconstitutional. He issued a directive to that effect. A Justice Department spokesman said the President consulted with Defense Sec. Perry and Joint Chiefs Chairman Shalikashvili in making the decision.

WALTER DELLINGER, Assistant Attorney General: After consulting with Sec. Perry and the Joint Chiefs, the President concluded that the provision does not serve any valid military or other purpose. Based on the Pentagon's military conclusion and after consulting with the Department of Justice about the legal effect of those conclusions, the President appropriately determined that the provision is unconstitutional and that the Department of Justice should not defend its constitutionality in any litigation.

MR. LEHRER: A White House spokesman later said the administration would welcome a court challenge to the provision. According to the Defense Department, 1,049 personnel would have to be discharged within six months under the new law. In Bosnia news today, Asst. Sec. of State Richard Holbrooke said the United States would not tolerate Serb threats to disrupt the Bosnian peace accord. The Bosnian Serbs have suspended all contact with the NATO peacekeeping force over the detention of several Serb army officers. The men are being held at the request of the International War Crimes Tribunal. At a news conference in Hungary, Holbrooke said the signing of the Dayton Accords was only the beginning of the peace process.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE, Assistant Secretary of State: Implementation is the key, and the most difficult part of implementation will be the civilian side. Every aspect of the Dayton agreement will require the full pressure and leadership of the implementing nations led by the contact group. The United States is fully committed. We have never said it would be easy.

MR. LEHRER: Holbrooke will got to Bosnia this weekend. Back in the United States, three people were killed when two commuter trains collided in New Jersey five miles out of New York City. One hundred and sixty-two people were injured. Transit officials said it appears one trail went through a stoplight, jumping the track and hitting the front of the other train. Rescue efforts were hampered by the location of the accident in a marshland. In Florida today, a beach maintenance worker in Ft. Lauderdale fatally shot five of his former coworkers before killing himself. Another worker was critically injured. The man had been fired for failing a drug test. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to a report from Iowa, Shields & Gigot, an AIDS experiment update, and a second look at the Vermeer. FOCUS - CAMPAIGN 96

MR. LEHRER: The Iowa caucuses are first tonight. They have become the traditional first big one on the road to Presidential nominations, and it's no different this time for the Republican candidates. Betty Ann Bowser reports.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: It was 25 degrees below zero in Davenport, Iowa, last week.

GROUP SINGING: Can you hear the turning?

MS. BOWSER: Inside the Good News Nondenominational Church, there was no heat, but these Midwest religious conservatives are a determined lot. With the Iowa Republican Caucus just days away, there was work to be done.

DAVE KARWOSKI, Iowa Christian Coalition: We are putting out 200,000 voter guides throughout the whole state of Iowa today and next Sunday because one of the things that the Iowa Christian Coalition, their mission is to influence public policy, to be able to have public policy that would be family-friendly, and so forth, and so the only way that's going to happen is if we elect candidates that feel those--have those same values.

MS. BOWSER: Dave Karwoski is a religious conservative, a member of the Christian Coalition, and a veteran of many Republican political contests. He and wife, Lynn, met as young political neophytes back in 1988, when they helped religious broadcaster Pat Robertson come from almost nowhere to finish second in that year's Presidential caucus.

DAVE KARWOSKI: What we did with that organization was put together conservatives from all the different Presidential campaigns that basically had the one premise that they were right to life. That is a very, very important issue to many of us in the political realm, and from that point there, we just networked with hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people, and, and I think you're seeing the fruit of that now in Iowa, as well as the nation.

MS. WARNER: Christian conservatives form a powerful force in Iowa Republican circles. On Monday night, when voters come to their neighborhood schools and community centers to take part in the caucus process, an estimated 40 percent of all the votes cast are expected to come from the religious right. And while they are united ideologically, this year they are split over whom they want to win. The Karwoskis are working for Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, considered by most experts to be the front-runner in a race that includes nine candidates. Dole says he is opposed to abortion, but as he crisscrosses the state, what he talks about mostly are his many years in the Senate.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Republican Presidential Candidate: I read today in the "USA Today" that people don't like Bob Dole because he's had experience. Well, sorry, I thought experience was necessary. I've always thought, you know, a surgeon has to have a first patient, but I never wanted to be the first patient.

MS. BOWSER: Dole has irritated some conservatives by refusing to sign a pledge to urge party leaders to keep an anti-abortion plank in the Republican platform. Still, the Karwoski family is rallying around a candidate they believe can beat President Clinton.

LYNN KARWOSKI, Dole Supporter: I think you can start with idealism and then gradually move towards realism without a great deal of compromise. So we need to move from, uh, again, that idealistic hope or belief to who's the most electable, again, though, without compromising what we believe is so very important to us.

MS. BOWSER: The Karwoskis' good friend, Bruce Kirkberg, is supporting anti-abortion Republican Pat Buchanan. PATRICK BUCHANAN, Republican Presidential Candidate: And I will give all my energy and fire and ability to keep my party a pro-life party in 1996 and forever after. BRUCE KIRKBERG, Buchanan Supporter: His pro-life stand, one of the most beautiful things that I like about it is that it's absolutely unwavering, and it's absolutely articulated at every level. SPOKESMAN: Well, we're going to play a video and then we're going to do a little role playing as far as the--

MS. BOWSER: Buoyed by a major upset victory in Louisiana on Tuesday, largely engineered by the religious right, Buchanan's foot soldiers are hoping a finely-tuned political organization will get people out to vote on Monday in Iowa and propel Buchanan into a head-on contest with Dole. This week, they conducted a caucus training seminar for campaign workers.

TRAINER: You must get there early and you must get your vote in, and you must--it's best if you know what's going to happen because organization is where you can't get rolled by the other candidates.

MS. BOWSER: Participating in a caucus requires time and effort, so the Buchanan supporters were taught how to conduct themselves in a caucus and to keep their man's message out front.

SPOKESMAN: Tell the people basically why it is that you support Pat Buchanan, and the best speech will be the speech that comes from your heart.

MS. BOWSER: Texas Sen. Phil Gramm is the candidate Buchanan upset on Tuesday in Louisiana. Like his opponents, he's trying to tap into the Iowa conservatives' concern for social issues.

PHIL GRAMM, Republican Presidential Candidate: As President, I will stop the funding for abortion on demand and for those who advocate it. [applause]

MS. BOWSER: Gramm has campaigned especially hard in Iowa. He's put volunteers in practically all of the state's 2,142 precincts.

SPOKESMAN: [on phone] I was wondering if you had decided on a candidate yet to support in the caucuses. Who would that be? You think you're going with Gramm? Really? All right.

MS. BOWSER: Roger Mall is a precinct chairman and religious conservative in Davenport. Like volunteers in the other campaigns, he's concerned about getting a good turnout on Monday night. He knows it isn't easy to convince people to spend an entire evening at a caucus.

ROGER MALL, Gramm Supporter: It's one thing to on your way home after work, on the way to the 7-Eleven, stop in and pull a lever in a primary. It's another thing to sit down, to know you're going to have to discuss issues with people in a small group setting, people you might not know, people you do know. Maybe that's even harder, people that you do know. So that requires a commitment that you just don't see elsewhere.

MS. BOWSER: Only one of the nine candidates in the race, businessman Morry Taylor, supports abortion rights. Former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, Senator Richard Lugar, Congressman Robert Dornan, former Ambassador Alan Keyes, and millionaire businessman Steve Forbes say they oppose abortion.

STEVE FORBES, Republican Presidential Candidate: I'd oppose abortions in late pregnancy, barring a life-threatening emergency. I'd oppose it for purposes of sex selection for the baby. I'd oppose mandatory government funding on a sensitive issue like that and being the father of five daughters, I would support parental notification in the case of minors. To move beyond that is going to take persuasion.

MS. BOWSER: Religious conservatives say they are uncomfortable with Forbes' position, and they complain he has spent less time in Iowa than any of his opponents.

STEVE FORBES: [ad] I'm Steve Forbes. I think it's wrong to spend taxpayers' money on politic campaigns.

MS. BOWSER: Instead of mounting a grassroots organization, Forbes has spent more than $4 million in Iowa on television advertising alone.

STEVE FORBES: [ad] We need a flat tax that's a tax cut. It's simple; it's honest; and that's a big change for Washington.

MS. BOWSER: The Forbes media blitz has frustrated the other candidates because they are bound by federal campaign spending limits. Forbes is not, because he is spending his own money.

MS. BOWSER: How do you explain the seemingly surge of Steve Forbes, who has virtually no organization?

SEN. ROBERT DOLE: Let's try $5 million.

SEN. PHIL GRAMM: It's very easy to explain, and that is that Forbes is spending money at a rate no one has ever spent money before. I, I guess I would have to say I believe in the old jingle, "Money can't buy you love." Maybe it helps you get-- find it; I don't know. But I don't believe it can buy you the Presidency.

SPOKESMAN: We would handle all the paper work to transfer that account.

MS. BOWSER: Stockbroker and Forbes volunteer Mark Polaschek isn't the least bit concerned about Forbes' spending spree.

MARK POLASCHEK, Forbes Supporter: I don't like the fact--I love the fact that Steve Forbes is spending his own money. He can do with his money just as you and I can, which is spend it on anything. That's the freedom America provides.

MS. BOWSER: But Boeyink, who heads the state's largest Political Action Committee, is concerned about the implications of that freedom. Iowans for Tax Relief is preparing a voter's guide that will be sent to its 51,000 members over the weekend.

JEFF BOEYINK, Iowans for Tax Relief: If Steve Forbes does well, it shows that you can buy just about anything, and it probably diminishes the value of the caucuses in Iowa, because if you don't have to organize, if you can simply come in and run ads and spend money, then we probably won't get the attention four years from now that we're getting right now.

MS. BOWSER: And what does that mean?

JEFF BOEYINK: I'm not sure if it's scary. It's not good necessarily for a grassroots organization like ours, that three years of campaign strategy goes out the window and we're all going to have to re-figure how we do it.

MS. BOWSER: In this final week, Forbes' opponents are trying to re-figure how to do it by playing up his inexperience. Dole has placed more than 10 television ads, many of them negative like this one.

SPOKESMAN: [ad] Steve Forbes, untested, just not ready for the job.

MS. BOWSER: University of Iowa Social Scientist Arthur Miller, who conducts the Heartland Poll, says this war of the airwaves is turning voters off in unprecedented numbers.

PROFESSOR ARTHUR MILLER, University of Iowa: And among those people who previously had a leaning, leaning towards some candidate or another, or even were undecided, as those negative campaigns came along, as people became dissatisfied with the way the campaign was going, they, in a sense, rather than making up their minds, decided that they didn't want to have anything to do with this, has done over organization, which is what Dole, Gramm, and Buchanan and some of the others have done.

MR. GIGOT: I think that conventional explanation is about right. Forbes is trying to do something in Iowa which has never been done, which is to come in late, and try to get a bunch of people to the polls who really have never participated in politics actively before. I talked to one of these people who was introducing Forbes at a rally this week. He had been Pat Robertson's press secretary in 1988, and he was saying that some of the people that the Forbes campaign is finding support Forbes were similar to Robertson voters in '88 not in issues but in one respect. They'd never gone to caucuses before. So they've got to get 'em out some how, they've got to create and really in two months an organization that Phil Gramm and Bob Dole and the others have been spending two years building.

MR. LEHRER: Mark, how do you read the Forbes factor, as we speak tonight?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, Jim, I think that Bob Dole, the race did not get negative until Steve Forbes got into it. It had not been a negative race. It could be accused of being a soporific race until then. But it was Forbes who really brought the negative commercial to it. Dole has responded and responded in kind; so has Lamar Alexander; so has--Phil Gramm has on the stump as well. Steve Forbes has essentially killed the unemployment issue in the Des Moines area. I mean, he has spent so much money. He's personally spent more than all the other candidates, leading candidates, combined in this state. So it is a--it is a novel approach and a question of whether, in fact, people making a connection on television and to his own personal campaigning are going to be persuaded. In Betty Ann's piece, there was a wonderful piece, a statement from Roger Mall who is, who is working for Phil Gramm in Davenport, in which he said it's a lot different to participate in a caucus in Iowa than it is to stop by the 7-Eleven or just to vote on the way in. Jim, you have to go in. You have to spend a couple of hours. You have to--you're expected to argue positions and debate with people you don't know. It's a little bit intimidating and inhibiting, as well as marvelously democratic.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Paul, some people have suggested that, that Iowa is really Steve Forbes' larger test than anybody else because this is the first time the Forbes surge, whatever you want to call it, is really going to be tested. Do you agree?

MR. GIGOT: I think it is a challenge for him I think in a couple of respects. First of all, he's not doing as well in the polls here as he is in New Hampshire, as he is in Arizona, as he is in some of the other states where he's had a lot of advertising on the air. Second, the, the religious right is stronger here as part of the Republican Party and as part of the caucus turnout or expected turnout than it is in some of these other states. That is not Steve Forbes's strong suit. Steve Forbes is doing best among young voters. He's doing best among independents. He's doing best among Perot voters, better than any of the other Republicans among Perot voters, and then in economic conservative middle class voters, who don't--who might vote on election day but haven't participated in caucuses before, so it's going to be a real test of his organization to see if he can get those people out I'm not so sure that he can measure up to the expectations that his high poll numbers have set for himself.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Mark, Phil Gramm, we talked--the three of us talked about it on Wednesday night, but he's got a lot riding now on Monday night, does he not?

MR. SHIELDS: He sure does, Jim. You know, that campaign is close to being on life support right now, and he does have history on his side by saying that if he finishes third, he's still alive. In 1988, when both parties' nominations were open, the third place finishes in Iowa, Gov. Michael Dukakis on the Democratic side, Vice President George Bush on the Republican side, both went on to win their party's nominations but there's no question that Gramm is, is struggling at this point. He has the best-organized campaign. If you could meld two campaigns, you'd meld Buchanan and Gramm. Gramm has this marvelous organization and Buchanan has momentum but not the organization. The fear of some Gramm supporters is that all of his buses are going to show up synchronized and organized on Monday night and there aren't going to be any people on them because the campaign really took a big hit from the Louisiana results.

MR. LEHRER: Paul, what about the positive side? What did Louisiana do for, for Buchanan, or anything that you can read, anything that's--

MR. GIGOT: It was huge for, for Buchanan. It's given him a big boost. It's given him something that he didn't have before, particularly in comparison to Phil Gramm, which was credibility. One of Phil Gramm's arguments to religious conservatives was your heart may be with Buchanan because he's a little more eloquent on the subject, a little more forceful, but he can't win. So stick with me, I can beat Bob Dole, and then I can deliver for you. By losing to Buchanan, he lost that argument, so now Buchanan can say, I can emerge as the main challenger of conservatives to Bob Dole, stick with me, and I think we saw some of that in Alaska, some of that leeching away from Gramm, we saw--we certainly saw it in Louisiana. If you look at behind the scenes here and you talk to the other campaigns, it's happening now for Buchanan.

MR. LEHRER: Is anything happening for Lamar Alexander, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: I can't tell, Jim. There seems to be--there's a buzz about him that two people who have sort of taken the high road in this, what Dick Lugar, the Senator from Indiana called the demolition derby, this campaign out here, where everybody's attacking everybody else, and particularly attacking Steve Forbes's flat tax idea, which has been just assaulted, that, that--taken thehigh road, which Dick Lugar certainly has done, but he doesn't seem to be in the running, the Senator from Indiana. Lamar may--Lamar Alexander may be profiting from that. It's always struck me about Lamar Alexander's candidacy, Jim, that it--he was made for Iowa, he was made for this state in the sense that here he was a moderate Southern governor with a really exemplary record in education, in economic growth, and all the rest of it, and then he sort of recreated himself for this campaign as a--whatever he was, I mean, the anti-Washington, cut their salaries in half and send 'em home, and I think if a real original Lamar Alexander will run in Iowa on Monday, he'd be an enormously formidable candidate.

MR. LEHRER: Paul, how do you read the Alexander thing?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I don't know that he's taken solely the high road. He sort of spits out the word zillionaire, not just a millionaire or a billionaire or trillionaire, but zillionaire to describe Forbes every time he refers to him, and he's got the exact square footage of his yacht down just, just flat. He has never found, I don't think, a real rationale to stand out. He was going to run as the outsider, somebody who wasn't Bob Dole and wasn't part of the conservative wing. Forbes sucked a lot of that energy right out of that message because Forbes hasn't been in politics before. So for a lot of voters, he's a more authentic outsider. And now Lamar Alexander's trying to run right up the middle between Bob Dole and Steve Forbes and saying, look, I agree with both of them about each other, a pretty good line, but there isn't, I don't-- it's going to be hard for him to do that, but he's still in the running for, for perhaps third place.

MR. LEHRER: Mark, you've been around a while. You've covered Iowa many times before. How important should we look--how important is Iowa going to be do you think to the final outcome, can you tell?

MR. SHIELDS: Iowa is enormously important, Jim. If you don't make it here, this isn't the New Haven tryouts. You can't rewrite the second act. If you're not in the top three, the chances are you're history, you're toast, you'd better go back to your day job because that's been, that's been the history. It gives it enormous lift going into New Hampshire. We are incapable of covering even gifted journalists, people like Paul and myself, of covering eight or nine campaigns simultaneously.

MR. LEHRER: Sure. Sure.

MR. SHIELDS: So what Iowa does is it winnows it down to, to three, two or maybe three at the most, and those are the people who will be getting coverage, who are getting the oxygen of the political world come next Tuesday.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. And we'll be talking about it then, and at other times next week. Thank you both very much.

MR. SHIELDS: Okay.

MR. GIGOT: Thanks, Jim. UPDATE - FIGHT AGAINST AIDS

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, an AIDS experiment a Vermeer reprise. Elizabeth Farnsworth has the AIDS story.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Scientists are now studying the early results from the controversial experiment that involved transplanting cells from the bone marrow of a baboon into a California man with AIDS. Spencer Michels begins our coverage.

SPENCER MICHELS: For the last six years, Jeff Getty has been a full-time AIDS activist, often taking part in demonstrations by the group ACT-UP, in times past smuggling AIDS drugs into the US. He has been infected with HIV for 15 years, and he's now in the late stages of AIDS.

JEFF GETTY, Transplant Recipient: AIDS takes no prisoners. You know, if you don't fight AIDS, you're dead, and so if you look at it from that point of view, you must continuously take action to stay alive.

MR. MICHELS: Two years ago, Getty, who lives in Oakland, California, heard about plans for a radical experiment to transplant bone marrow from a baboon into humans. Baboons have a natural resistance to HIV. They don't get AIDS. The hope of the researcher, Dr. Susan Ilstadt, at the University of Pittsburgh, was to transfer the baboon's resistance to the human, without transferring any baboon viruses that could infect the recipient.

JEFF GETTY: I wrote a letter to Dr. Ilstadt volunteering to be a soldier in the front line, so to speak, and to, you know, that I philosophically told her I was willing to take, take on the battle and risk my life for this one.

MR. MICHELS: Getty was chosen for a transplant over other volunteers because he was in relatively good health. Despite the advanced condition of his disease, he had a fighting chance to survive long enough to further the science.

JEFF GETTY: I'm going to die anyhow unless some miraculous thing comes along, so why not give it a try.

SPOKESMAN: A hundred is a fine dose. It's very, it's what they consider a replacement dosage.

MR. MICHELS: Getty and other activists, including these at San Francisco's Project Inform, encourage scientists to proceed with cutting edge research. They want researchers to focus on rebuilding the human immune system damaged by HIV, a new approach to AIDS treatment. But the use of animal transplants has brought opposition from animal rights advocates. Getty, who loves animals, was also disturbed that a baboon would have to be sacrificed for this first experiment, although not in later ones. The Food & Drug Administration finally approved the transplant last Summer and also made sure the baboon was free of disease.

JEFF GETTY: The choice of animal was important, and when I heard that we had an extremely clean animal and that was heavily scrutinized that actually I feel safer in some ways with the baboon cells than I would getting a blood transfusion from a blood bank.

MR. MICHELS: Finally, in mid-December in a half-hour procedure at San Francisco General Hospital, Getty received two types of baboon bone marrow cells: immature stem cells to augment and improve the immune system, and newly-discovered facilitator cells to help the body accept foreign tissue. During the three weeks he spent at the General Clinical Research Center, he did not develop any infection. On his well-publicized release, he and his doctors were distinctly upbeat.

JEFF GETTY: Yeah, I'm back. To the naysayers who said that I would never recover from this procedure, well, here I am, and you were wrong. [applause]

DR. STEVEN DEEKS, University of California: The procedure was safe, safer than we had initially expected. Jeff tolerated everything very well. But the more critical question about whether or not this procedure actually provided any benefit for Jeff remains unclear.

MR. MICHELS: Dr. Steven Deeks of the University of California performed the transplant. He admits the unprecedented procedure was risky.

DR. STEVEN DEEKS: Well, Jeff clearly could have had an allergic reaction to the infusion and clearly, that was always a possibility. No one's ever done this before. We didn't know. His own immune system was temporarily suppressed by the procedure, but it's come back right to base line, and Jeff today feels as well as he's felt in quite some time.

JEFF GETTY: I can taste, I can smell, and I can breathe, three main things that I was lacking the ability to do in October.

MR. MICHELS: Getty isn't sure why, but because he has studied immunology, he does understand what is supposed to be happening to the baboon cells in his body.

JEFF GETTY: They hopefully migrated to my hip where they're now residing and have taken up space, because of the ablation of my immune system were given time to start a home in my hip, and hopefully now, they're cranking out little baboon progenitors and progeny that are going through and maybe changing the balance of my immune system, and possibly fighting HIV, possibly helping my immune system signal itself better to fight HIV, itself.

DR. STEVEN DEEKS: HIV is a tricky virus. HIV infects brain cells; it infects all sorts of cells in the body. There's no way that by this procedure we will completely eliminate HIV from Jeff's body. There's absolutely no way.

MR. MICHELS: Nevertheless, Dr. Deeks and his patient say their experiment thrusts AIDS research into a new direction which many academics have opposed as too radical.

DR. STEVEN DEEKS: You have to understand that for the past ten, fifteen years in AIDS research, most of the focus has been on stopping the virus, and we're very, very good at that now. Jeff needs a rebuilt immune system. And there a lot of people who won't think that's possible. But we here think it's at least worth looking into.

MR. MICHELS: Getty agrees. He says such research should have been done 10 years ago but was stifled by regulators and academics.

JEFF GETTY: If you ask them to approve a bold measure and something goes wrong, they're going to get fired. So the name of the game is stall it as long as possible, till they know it's safe. I'm optimistic, but I'm an angry man inside because I'm tired of the delays and watching my friends die. I've watched hundreds of my friends die.

MR. MICHELS: Early results show few, if any, baboon cells engrafted into Getty's body. More tests are planned. But his immune system is much improved. He says that unexpected, unexplained development is another reason for boldness in AIDS research.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Now to explore the results and the implications of the baboon experiment we turn to Dr. Jonathan Allan, and AIDS researcher at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, and Dr. Paul Volberding, director of the AIDS program at San Francisco General Hospital, where the transplant was performed. Welcome to both of you. Dr. Paul Volberding, how is Mr. Getty now, how--what are the results of the experiment as of now?

DR. PAUL VOLBERDING, AIDS Researcher: [San Francisco] Well, I saw Jeff this morning, and he's looking great. He looked better than he looked in the video. So despite what he's been through, he's done very well. His immune system is, if anything, somewhat stronger than it was when he started the procedure. He's feeling healthy. He's very active, and he's a real courageous person.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Did the baboon cells have anything to do with that?

DR. VOLBERDING: I don't think so at this point. Evidence that we have is that there are no detectable baboon cells in his blood, which doesn't mean that there aren't a few there, or that they might not appear later, but at this point, I think that Jeff is not benefiting from the baboon cells. He may be benefiting from the procedure and from the medications that he's been receiving as a result of that.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Explain that. What might have helped him that was done?

DR. VOLBERDING: Well, Jeff went through a preparation that was actually we thought the riskiest part of this whole transplant where he got radiation therapy to his immune system and also chemotherapy to try to clear out some space in his bone marrow for the new cells to grow. That process and then the anti-viral therapy that he's getting, he's getting very potent drugs against HIV, to try to help again create more space in his bone marrow, we think are probably the explanation, but it really opens up a lot of new questions in areas of research actually that we, we hope to explore.

MS. FARNSWORTH: So you've learned something but it's not what you expected to learn, is it?

DR. VOLBERDING: Well, not surprisingly, in this kind of innovative research, we really agree with, with Jeff, that we have to be bold. We have to take safety into consideration, of course, but we have to be bold and in the process of doing this kind of very innovative research, we can open up unexpected avenues for further work.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Dr. Allan, would you consider the experiment a failure at this point?

DR. JONATHAN ALLAN, AIDS Researcher: [San Antonio] Well, I was pretty disappointed that it seems that the baboon cells didn't ingraft in the recipient, and so I was, I was very disappointed. At the same time, my concerns about infectious disease risks remained the same.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Yes. You've had many doubts about this experiment. Would you describe some of them.

DR. ALLAN: Well, there's essentially three areas that you have to consider. The first is, is the infectious disease risk, and in looking at that, you have to weigh that versus the benefit from this procedure.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay. Briefly explain that.

DR. ALLAN: Well, the thing is that baboons are not clean animals. They harbor several viruses that we've--we know they carry that we can't eliminate, and they may carry several viruses that have yet to be discovered, and the problem with that is that it's a virtual guarantee that these viruses, some of which may be transmitted to the recipients, so we can't prevent those kinds of infections, and the real problem ends up being is that many of those infections have long clinical latency periods which means that it may be several months to several years before one knows whether the recipients are even infected.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay. I'll come back to that in a minute. Tell us your other objections to this experiment.

DR. ALLAN: Well, what follows with that is also the science, because really, we're really asking too much from the baboon cells because from what we know, at least at this point, in a state of the art in terms of immunology that we shouldn't expect this to work because the baboon cells are unlikely to be able to function immunologically in a human host. So we may be able to get the baboon cells to ingraft, we may even get them to grow, but it's highly unlikely that they should be able to function immunologically in a human.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Dr. Volberding, what about those objections?

DR. VOLBERDING: Well, the two areas that Jonathan is talking about are ones that we've obviously considered in the two years that this process has been under consideration. This protocol was more reviewed than any research I've done in the last 15 years with HIV.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Reviewed by the FDA and various committees.

DR. VOLBERDING: Exactly. Reviewed by national and local committees, and one of the major areas of concern was, of course, the public health, the possibility that we would be introducing a virus from the baboon into Jeff, and that that might pose a broader public health risk. The problem we have is that Jonathan's concerns are appropriate butthere's really no answering them. If we're ever going to do this work, we think that this was the appropriate time to do it, under these conditions of really maximum safety we felt, and we've been monitoring Jeff and plan to keep monitoring him closely. Now, in terms of the immune function, we agree that it's unlikely in a sense that this will be a dramatic benefit. On the other hand, again, almost the only way we can, we can learn how these cells might work in a human environment is to actually do the, do the procedure. And there have been some leads in other animals that this might actually result in functional immune cells because the baboon cells are, we think, not possible to be infected with AIDS, this is the obvious background for this kind of work.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Does this experiment make invalid your assumptions about what a baboon's stem cells might do, or do you just try again?

DR. VOLBERDING: Well, we're going to consider that carefully. We agree with, with the concerns that Jonathan and others have expressed that this must go very cautiously, that there are risks. We accept that. We certainly don't want to see large scale trials of this sort conducted. We think it should be done under extremely careful conditions. We're going to follow Jeff longer to see if there's any evidence of infection from the baboon. So far, we haven't seen any, and also to see whether we can find any evidence of ingraftment. The more we feel that the safety is, is under control, the more likely we would be to do a few more patients to see if, if, in fact, by changing some of the conditions we might be able to make this work better.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Dr. Allan, some--there is some evidence humans have developed fatal inflammation of the brain, for example, from bites from Rhesus monkeys. Given this problem and your concern and I gather other people in your field's concern, why was there not more of an outcry when this happened, when this experiment was conducted in December?

DR. ALLAN: Well, the situation is that the, this procedure was only approved for one individual and know that the actual risk to the population is very small because really in order for a new infectious disease to establish itself it has to be transmitted from patient to contacts, and only doing one minimizes that, but at the same time, one must also realize that you're opening the door for more procedures. With that risk, with that door opening comes an increased risk. The more people that get baboon tissue, whether they're hearts or baboon bone marrow, increases the risk of transmitting viruses to the general population, and to my mind it's a needless risk because there are other procedures that are currently being developed, new drug therapies that really have a lot of promise. This particular procedure, while it's very innovative, has in many respects very little chance for success, so we may be jeopardizing the public health in a needless fashion. I would hope that we could try and learn as much as we can from this one procedure without moving too quickly, which could actually promote infectious diseases.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, Dr. Allan, Dr. Volberding, thanks for being with us. ENCORE - THE MYSTERY OF VERMEER

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, a Vermeer encore. At 3 o'clock this morning, the line began to form at the National Gallery in Washington to see the exhibition of the 17th century Dutch painter. There have been few attractions like it at the gallery or elsewhere in the recent world of art. When the show ends this Sunday, more than 300,000 people will have attended. For those not among that 300,000, the solace we can offer tonight is this reprise of our report on the exhibit by our economics correspondent, who is also a man of art, Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston.

PAUL SOLMAN: In the art world, perhaps the show of the century. Until mid February, with limited seating, actually standing, the paintings of the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer, who did no more than five dozen pictures of which only thirty-five are known to still exist. This show boasts almost two thirds of all known Vermeers, by far the most ever assembled. On the other hand, that's only 21 paintings, most of them small, and yet, the crowds have thronged to Washington's National Gallery as if Vermeer were a rock star. Why do they love him?

MAN: I think the physical beauty first, the fact that it's so quiet, oh, his very realistic style.

MR. SOLMAN: Vermeer's seems to be an art that just about everyone can connect with, even those who, like this woman, are legally blind.

WOMAN: I'm very impressed with both his use of light and the very distinctive lines and the detail that he uses, I think, they're very amazing, and some of the ones I saw previously were so clear they almost looked like, you know, they looked like a photograph.

MR. SOLMAN: We asked the show's curator, Arthur Wheelock, a distinguished Vermeer scholar, if he thought Vermeer's primary appeal was his realism, and whether fellow academics might consider that unsophisticated.

ARTHUR WHEELOCK, Curator, National Gallery: There's nothing unsophisticated about loving a painting that looks very real. The joy that these paintings bring is on many levels, and the realism, the sense of realism, is, is, I think, fundamental. I mean, you've got to look at these and say, wow, it is incredible what we can do.

MR. SOLMAN: "The Music Lesson" is a great example of Vermeer could do. Acquired by King George III, back when America was still a bunch of colonies, and on loan from Buckingham Palace, it gives new meaning to the phrase "attention to detail."

ARTHUR WHEELOCK: To look at the textures of, of the tablecloth, to look at the, the light coming through the windows, the way it floods in and the shadows that it creates and the way it illuminates her, her arm, which gives a kind of sparkle to her jacket, the sheen on that wonderful white pitcher and the reflections of the platter underneath it as it comes up and the light flickers off the bottom of it, these things he captures, a sense of light, of color, of textures, and these are very, very important in making his paintings seem so real.

MR. SOLMAN: But how real or realistic are they? At the harpsichord, the woman is looking down; in the mirror, she's turned toward the man. It's as if two moments were captured at once, one musical, the other romantic. And the shadows from the windows to the harpsichord fall at different angles, part of the composition, not reality. In fact, some scholars consider Vermeer abstract.

ARTHUR WHEELOCK: We think of Vermeer as being very realistic and very precise, but if you look closely, occasionally you can see how incredibly bold and abstract he is. If you look at the marbling, the--on these tiles, this incredibly quick, fluid brush strokes that he is, he is giving the sense of, of that floor.

MR. SOLMAN: Vermeer, who died at 43, was a small part of the world's first middle class art market, pictures for folks who lived like this. The map in the background of many of his pictures, like this woman with a pitcher, speaks to Holland's global trade and widespread wealth in the 1600's.His subjects frequently wear the finest clothing. On occasion, their wealth, itself, is in evidence. But behind the mundane, admirers have long found mystery.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: But there's just something when you see a Vermeer, you want to stop and spend a few minutes, and you can find of ask yourself, why am I spending time looking at this woman in the silly hat? I think after thinking about it a long time, he was able to capture the sort of sense of ambiguity. You really don't know what they're thinking.

MR. SOLMAN: They mystery of Vermeer; it's been written about since at least 1866 by a French critic who called Vermeer "my sphinx." In 1921, another French critic wrote about the mysterious Vermeer and tried to figure out "by what witchcraft did he, representing the most daily and commonplace sights, manage to give the viewer so mysterious, so grand, so exceptional emotion?". Arthur Wheelock has studied Vermeer for 20 years. He says the man is as mysterious as his work.

ARTHUR WHEELOCK: The guy's name is Johannes Vermeer, but it's amazing how little we know about him.

MR. SOLMAN: We know he was married and had 13 children, so his wife was mostly pregnant. But we don't know if any of his models were his wife, and there are no kids in any of his work. We know he was an art dealer and innkeeper living here in Delft. We don't know how actively he sold his own work. We know he died fairly young and broke. We don't know why. We do know some things about how he worked. For example, he seems to have used a camera obscura 200 years before film was invented to see projected images, which then inspired him to blur details in the foreground, as old- fashioned box cameras did. These lion-chair finials are often pointed to as an example. And then there's what he does with the painted self. In the famed "View of Delft," for instance, you can actually see how he manipulated his pigments.

ARTHUR WHEELOCK: There's even sand. I mean, he has over there in the red roofs on the left, I mean, you feel the various textures all the way across, the ones in shadow, the ones in light, the tower of the Nuva Kirk, which is really three-dimensional, and here's this little spot of yellow that Proust writes about.

MR. SOLMAN: Wheelock's referring to French novelist Marcel Proust, who immortalized this picture in the words of one of his characters, a dying author. "That is how I ought to have written," he said. "My last books are too dry. I ought to have gone over them with several coats of paint, made my language exquisite in itself, like this little patch of yellow wall." Now if Marcel Proust was excited by Vermeer, imagine how Arthur Wheelock must feel. It took him eight years to put this show together, coaxing from some of the world's greatest collections priceless treasures--"The Geographer," for example.

ARTHUR WHEELOCK: It's from a museum in Frankfurt that traditionally does not lend paintings, and so we worked about four years, and the process was complicated because the chairman of the board died during the process, during all of our negotiations. The director was fired; a new director was hired; his first decision as the new director was to lend Vermeer.

MR. SOLMAN: Getting "The Geographer" was the coup, so too "Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid"--twice stolen from the same private collection, once for ransom to fund the IRA, and only recently recovered by authorities for its new owner, the National Gallery of Ireland, it came to Washington before ever yet hanging in the Irish museum. The exhibition has had its share of crises--the budget stand-offs that have twice shut down the government have twice darkened the Vermeer Show. But thanks to private money and a couple of continuing resolutions, the lights are back on and the people back in for reasons that connoisseurs and the rest of us all seem to agree on.

WOMAN: Well, my husband is getting ready to paint a portrait of our daughter, and I was saying that he had to study this painting more than any other in the show, because if he could capture that glow and that luminescence that she has, then he would capture the essence of a young girl.

ARTHUR WHEELOCK: But what's wonderful about this painting is how he creates an image that really represents I think a universal type, and, in fact, he generalizes. He's a classicist in many ways. He purifies and idealizes forms, and you feel the sense of beauty emanating from this woman in large part in the way he does this in this painting.

MR. SOLMAN: What do you take away from this event?

ARTHUR WHEELOCK: Well, I think all of us feel this incredible sense of quietude and peaceful harmony from these paintings, and it's something you feel when you walk through the crowds here on the most crowded of days, that it's a really reverential attitude of people looking at these paintings. It feels--it comes--it emanates from them, and it really comes in to all of us. It's a really extraordinary thing, and it's nothing you can explain. There's a certain mystery about Vermeer that will always remain, but it has this peacefulness that I think overwhelms all of us. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, London was hit by a huge bomb explosion. Dozens of people were injured. A reporter at the Irish Broadcasting Service said he received a call from the IRA saying the truce with Britain was over, and flooding caused the President to declare certain counties in Oregon and Washington disaster areas. A follow-up before we go tonight to last night's focus segment on moving football teams: National Football League owners voted today to let the Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore for the 1996 season but team name and colors will remain in Cleveland, which was promised a new team by 1999. We'll see you on Monday night. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.