The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

JIM LEHRER:

Good evening. In the headlines this Thursday, five more are dead in South Africa violence as the U.N. Security Council considered anti-apartheid actions. Secretary Shultz was in Mexico talking peace in Central America. And doctors said actor Rock Hudson has AIDS. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL:

This is what you'll find on the NewsHour tonight after we summarize the day's news. As the United Nations debates sanctions on South Africa, so do we with two South Africans. Then part four of our weeklong documentary focus on Mexico. Tonight: Americans who live there. Finally, a hopeful story about AIDS disease: a report on one victim who got treated in Paris like actor Rock Hudson. News Summary

LEHRER: There were more deaths and arrests in South Africa today. Five blacks were killed and 16 were wounded in a riot outside Johannesburg. The government said the victims were shot by police after a crowd of 4,000 funeral mourners began throwing stones. The government also reported that 792 persons have now been arrested under state-of-emergency powers declared Saturday. And there was reaction to the decision yesterday by France to suspend investments in South Africa and to call home its ambassador. The South African Chamber of Commerce said blacks and the French would be the losers.

RAYMOND PARSON, Chamber of Commerce: There would be two main losers: black interests in South Africa and France itself. I say this because black interests are served by job creation, and for that we need foreign investment. And France will lose because by trying to reduce their investment in South Africa they will also reduce their influence to do good.

LEHRER: France wants the 15-member United Nations Security Council to join in leveling economic and other sanctions against South Africa. Debate on such a resolution began late this afternoon at the Security Council in New York.

CLAUDE KEMOULARIA, French Ambassador to the U.N. [through interpreter]: Events in recent days have shown a new and serious worsening. By declaring a state of emergency, by conferring full powers on the army and the police, by multiplying the arbitrary arrests, by giving the order to fire on populations, the government of South Africa is increasing its repression. These are the facts which have led my government to request an emergency meeting of the Security Council. It is indeed the duty of our council to renew its condemnation of the system of apartheid and the practices which derive from it.

VERNON WALTERS, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N: This is the fourth time, Mr. President, in as many weeks that the Security Council has met to discuss issues relating to South Africa. Mr. President, the United States firmly believes, however, that such an isolation would lead to more bloodshed.

LEHRER: Two white South Africans debate the sanctions issue in our lead focus segment tonight. Robin?

MacNEIL: Secretary of State George Shultz went to Mexico City today for talks about issues of concern to both countries. On arrival there he turned down a request from four Latin American nations, including Mexico, for direct talks between the United States and Nicaragua. The secretary said that instead the four Contadora countries should resume their negotiations with Nicaragua. The Shultz visit came the day after Mexico announced devaluation of the peso by 20 and sweeping measures to stop the decline of its economy, aggravated by the falling price of oil.

In Washington today, a new immigration bill was introduced in the House of Representatives by Democrat Peter Rodino, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Unlike a bill now before the Senate, the Rodino bill would grant automatic amnesty to most illegal aliens. Later in tonight's program we have our fourth documentary report in a weeklong look at Mexico. Tonight, Americans who choose to live there.

In Costa Rica, the anti-Sandinista leader Eden Pastora turned up safe today after surviving a helicopter crash. Pastora, leader of one group of guerrillas fighting the Nicaraguan government, was reported missing yesterday.

LEHRER: President Reagan today worked in the Oval Office and attended a meeting of the Cabinet in what was clearly his most active day since his surgery 12 days ago. He walked from the White House living quarters to the Oval Office. "I feel fine, great," he told reporters. One of the major topics of the Cabinet meeting was reportedly how to break the congressional impasse on the budget. Later in the day, House and Senate conferees met again to see if agreement could be reached. On the table was a new plan from the Senate side that would reduce next year's deficit by more than $60 billion.

MacNEIL: Movie actor Rock Hudson has been suffering from AIDS disease for more than a year, it was announced today. The 59-year-old star has been in the American Hospital in Paris since Sunday with conflicting accounts circulating of his ailment. A spokeswoman, Yanou Collart, told reporters today that he has acquired immune deficiency syndrome, the ailment that depletes the body's immunity to infection and which has killed more than 5,000 victims in the United States. Ms. Collart said Hudson's AIDS was diagnosed a year ago. She said he's also suffering from a disease of the liver.

YANOU COLLART, Hudson spokeswoman: The physician discovered abnormalities in the liver, which without knowledge of the AIDS diagnosis were either suspected to be caused by an infectious problem or were consistent with metastatic liver disease. These abnormalities are currently being evaluated. Mr. Hudson's condition is improving daily. A decision about his further treatment will be made in the near future.

MacNEIL: In a focus section later in this program, we have a documentary report on an AIDS victim who also sought treatment in Paris, followed by an interview with his doctor.

LEHRER: And finally in the news of this day, OPEC voted some minor price reductions in the oil it sells the world. The decision at the cartel's Geneva meeting was not unanimous. An observer said the reductions are so slight they will scarcely be felt in the price of gasoline or other oil products in the United States and elsewhere. And in India, militant Sikhs condemned the agreement reached yesterday by moderates and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The agreement was designed to end the strife in the Punjab section of India over a Sikh desire for independence. Militants said today the deal was a betrayal and vowed to continue their holy war. South Africa: Sanctions Debate

LEHRER: South Africa, described here the other night as a running stream of gasoline that a burning match could ignite into flames seen around the world. Today the story was the death of five more blacks and a riotous clash with police outside Johannesburg, the arrest total under the state of emergency going to 792, and the move, led by France, to isolate the South African government economically and diplomatically. France took its sanctions call to the U.N. Security Council late this afternoon and asked the other nations of the world to follow its lead. South Africa is not a member of the U.N. General Assembly, having been voted out some time ago, thus most of the words heard today were those of condemnation. Here is an excerpt.

Amb. KEMOULARIA [through interpreter]: What we are seeking in this tragic situation is a unanimous stand to be taken by the international community. France, for its part, has decided immediately to recall its ambassador to South Africa and to immediately suspend any new French investment in that country.

DANISH AMBASSADOR: The South African government must be brought to understand that the apartheid system has to be abolished while it is still possible through peaceful means. Denmark strongly believes that the situation in South Africa constitutes a serious threat to international peace and security and that the government of South Africa is guilty of acts of aggression and breaches of the peace in violation of the provisions of the United Nations charter.

LEHRER: The sanctions issue now as seen by two white South Africans: Sheena Duncan, president of an anti-apartheid organization known as the Black Sash, and John Chettle, director of the Washington-based South Africa Foundation.

Ms. Duncan, should the rest of the world do what France did?

SHEENA DUNCAN: I'm very much in favor of it. I think the situation demands that kind of response.

LEHRER: What would the response mean? What effect would it have?

Ms. DUNCAN: Well, I believe that the pressure for economic sanctions is the only thing that has ever moved the South African business community into putting real pressure on the government for real change, and that's very important.

LEHRER: What about the recalling of the ambassador, which France did yesterday? Should all nations do that?

Ms. DUNCAN: I think it would be very effective. It's an indication of the seriousness with which the world takes our situation.

LEHRER: Mr. Chettle, what's your reading of what the effect of that would be if everybody did what France did?

JOHN CHETTLE: Well, I think there's absolute agreement among a very wide spectrum of opinion in South Africa, including some of the most classically strong opponents of the South African government, including people like Alan Paton, who wrote Cry the Beloved Country, including Helen Suzman, who was for long the strongest single campaigner in the South African Parliament against apartheid, that it would be absolutely disastrous, that it would not achieve its objective, that it would deny opportunity to black South Africans, and that it would be a setback to the cause of reform.

LEHRER: What kind of setback? What would happen?

Mr. CHETTLE: Well, it would be a setback in the sense that first of all, if you have serious economic repercussions it means that you're going to have less jobs, it means that you are going to throw out a lot of blacks, mainly blacks because they tend to be the less skilled people, into the job market. There is no job market. One of the main reasons why you have problems in South Africa and why you have the current discontent is in part because there is something like 15 to 20 percent black unemployment. Something like three million blacks are unemployed. And I nd it difficult -- and Alan Paton said this to Bishop Tutu -- he found it difficult to understand how he could square it with his Christian conscience to urge measures which would have that effect on people who are in the least position to be able to deal with it.

LEHRER: Ms. Duncan?

Ms. DUNCAN: Well, John has presented to us the white South African argument against disinvestment. It is patently true that investment in South Africa has not brought about a just and democratic society. We're in a disastrous situation of violent conflict, and what we are looking for is where are there nonviolent pressures that can be exerted to persuade our government to turn around before we really are embroiled in a real civil war?

LEHRER: In other words, your position is that, with all of this pressure, if this pressure came from the world, that the government would step in and end apartheid?

Ms. DUNCAN: I think that the pressures on the government, at the moment the pressure is coming from the black community inside. The business sector, the important and influential sector of the white community, has never acted against apartheid. They've said that they're not in favor of it, but they've never taken any action. And if one can put sufficient pressure on them to really intend to persuade the government to change, and if that pressure is also coming from the West at the same time, then our government is faced with very real, real persuasive forces.

LEHRER: You don't think the government would react that way?

Mr. CHETTLE: No. Every time the government has been pressured in a crass way, for example in the arms embargo, they promptly set about establishing a major arms industry, and in fact it's the 10th largest arms industry in the world today. And the same has been true of a whole number of issues. If anybody thought they were going to lie down and play dead, I think it's unlikely that that will happen.

LEHRER: You mean apartheid would get worse, the government would be even more repressive against blacks?

Mr. CHETTLE: I think that in fact it could well lead in that direction, because if they feel themselves increasingly beleaguered, if they feel themselves increasingly under attack, if they feel that there is absolutely no comprehension that they are trying to reform, then what advantage is it for them to continue to reform?

Ms. DUNCAN: Well, the arms embargo is a very good example of a sanction that has actually created thousands of jobs inside South Africa. And that's the first thing. I don't agree with John that our government -- it's not any longer the nationalist, Afrikaner nationalism that would rather die with its back to the wall and shed the last drop of blood. I believe that the significance of Mr. Botha and his supporters is that they are more pragmatic because they are more concerned about prosperity and profits and the free enterprise system. And therefore they are much more likely to respond -- I mean, everything else has been tried. Things can't get very much worse. From the point of view of a black person, the repression is so great it can't get very much worse if you're a black person living inside South Africa. And we've got to try the remaining steps that are open.

LEHRER: Mr. Chettle, what do you say to those people who've said this on our program several times now in the last few weeks, that time is running out in South Africa, that something must be done or the whole thing is going to go up?

Mr. CHETTLE: Well, that's been said for the last 25 years, and I've heard it pretty continuously ever since then. I don't think that that's true, but I do think that there is a need for urgency. What I nd --

LEHRER: Urgency on the part of whom?

Mr. CHETTLE: On the part of the South African government to implement its reforms. But what I nd slightly ironical is the hysteria which has surrounded this issue. After all, Freedom House issued a statement, the annual survey of freedom around the world, which said that South Africa had only got one country in the whole of Africa that had more freedom than it. In other words, that there was only one country in the whole of Africa that had more freedom than South Africa. South Africa has been the most consistent friend in Africa that the United States has. It has an independent judiciary; it has free newspapers, outspoken newspapers; it has the ability for people like Sheena to come abroad and even urge sanctions against it. And yet, my gosh, what is the country that the United States is taking action against? It is South Africa. And I think it is absolutely absurd when South Africa is in the process of making, as Secretary Shultz said, more change and more reform in the last four years than in the previous 30, for anybody -- and I admire Sheena Duncan's great efforts -- for anybody to say that the position of blacks is becoming worse and worse. It's simply not true.

Ms. DUNCAN: You've just made some astonishing statements. We have an independent judiciary which has to administer laws which have taken away the protection of the courts. If somebody is detained, the courts cannot in any way intervene and protect them. We appear to have a free press, which is permitted to comment but is not permitted to publish anything about prisons, police, the defense force. We just simply don't know what is not being published in the newspapers. And when it comes to the reform program, if we had time tonight I could actually go through the legislation that has happened. Our new constitution entrenches apartheid laws for the very first time in South Africa's history. It's based on the Race Classification Act and the Group Areas Act, and if either of those two is repealed, the constitution crumbles, it simply can't work. The reform, so-called reform legislation, has been a process of actually tightening up the exclusion of the black majority from our common society.

LEHRER: Mr. Chettle says that this is hysteria that's going on now and that he doesn't understand it in light of what's going on.

Ms. DUNCAN: Well, I do feel hysterical about it. I do feel hysterical about people dying in the streets. I do feel hysterical that in this wealthiest country in Africa that there should be so many hungry and homeless people. I am hysterical about it.

Mr. CHETTLE: Well, if one is hysterical about it, one should try and do something about it by introducing more jobs and more money. You know, it is interesting to hear these facts produced in this different way. Here the South African government produced a reform which most people I think thought was a very genuine reform, which has brought people of color into the South African Parliament for the first time in 300 years. There are now white and black and colored and Indian cabinet ministers -- not black cabinet ministers as yet -- but they are beginning to actually have a say in their own destinies. To say that this merely entrenches apartheid misses the point: that if you are trying to bring about change in a situation which is deeply polarized, you have to go gradually.

LEHRER: Is it your position that that approach just will not work, that the time is running out for that kind of approach?

Ms. DUNCAN: That would be one thing that I would argue about it, but I can't even agree that this is a program of reform. I just can't agree, because the facts are plain to see for anybody who chooses to look at them in a rational kind of way.

LEHRER: Let me ask you this. I understand you're going back to South Africa on Monday.

Ms. DUNCAN: Well, I'm going to London on Monday.

LEHRER: Well, but do the state-of-emergency powers -- would you be subject to arrest when you go back?

Ms. DUNCAN: Anybody. Anybody is. I mean, under a state of emergency anybody is. But I don't expect so because they've arrested -- the news tonight said 792 people. But none of them are people who are sort of very well known. It tends to be the local leadership. And they don't seem to be -- I mean, Allan Boesak, Desmond Tutu and people like that are much braver and more outspoken than me, and they're still --

LEHRER: Do you think that people like Sheena Duncan are doing more harm than good to resolve this problem?

Mr. CHETTLE: I'm afraid that they are, that they've done great things inside South Africa but I think she's doing something that is deeply, deeply damaging to the very people that she wants to help. And if this action is ineffectve, and I believe that it will be ineffective --

LEHRER: The sanction action?

Mr. CHETTLE: The sanction action. It is going deeply to hurt thousands of black people, and I'm afraid Sheena is going to have to take the responsibility for urging that.

Ms. DUNCAN: Well, I will take that responsibility if you will take responsibility for the fact that all the money that has been invested in South Africa since diamonds were discovered in 1852 has not -- has brought the black people into a state of total dispossession from their land, their citizenship and everything that matters. And if you will take responsibility for that, I am prepared if the sanctions don't work and go the way you think, I am prepared to take my share of the responsibility.

LEHRER: Ms. Duncan, Mr. Chettle, thank you both. Robin?

MacNEIL: Still to come on tonight's NewsHour, the fourth in our documentary series about Mexico. Tonight, on Americans who live there. Then the story of an AIDS victim determined to find a cure for the disease that has killed thousands of its victims. Troubled Neighbor: Americans in Mexico

MacNEIL: As we reported earlier, Mexico has announced that it's devaluing the peso by 20 as part of a new effort to make its economy more competitive. That'll be good news for some people we look at tonight in the fourth of our special reports this week on Mexico. The already low peso has made Mexico a cheap haven for a large number of Americans. There were fears earlier this year that the Americans might be at risk as a result of a crackdown on the drug trade. Those fears surfaced when an American narcotics agent and his Mexico colleague were murdered. Our special correspondent Charles Krause reports on life for Americans south of the border.

CHARLES KRAUSE [voice-over]: For the 10,000 Americans who live along the shores of Lake Chapala, the dangers of living in Mexico have been wildly exaggerated. Many of the Americans here are retired. They live quietly, in beautiful homes only an hour's drive from Guadalajara. But they don't feel threatened even though seven Americans have been kidnapped or murdered in Guadalajara so far this year.

ALBERT ROUSE, Chapala Society: People don't disappear wholesale. We may have had a lot of them within a short period of time, but again we have to deal with the long-term period. I don't think the crime rate down here is any worse than it is in the United States.

KRAUSE [voice-over]: The real-life drama of Guadalajara's drug wars has been front-page news for months almost everywhere in the world. But amateur actors at Lake Chapala's Little Theatre told us the danger for Americans in Mexico has been blown way out of proprotion.

1st AMERICAN: Any time of the day or night you can walk the streets here and there's no problem, and in the little town I come from there's more crime over there in one night than there is over here in --

2nd AMERICAN: Just ask the doorman in a hotel in Washington, D.C., if you should go out by yourself at night.

3rd AMERICAN: Right. He'll tell you no.

4th AMERICAN: Being a former New Yorker I wouldn't think twice about having a problem here. The worst crime I've heard here was recently someone had their pocket picked.

5th AMERICAN: Yeah, and I think most of us live here and we wouldn't live anywhere else because it's so much better here than in the States.

6th AMERICAN: We like it.

BILL REDER: I think it's really a Garden of Eden. The weather is perfect. It's guaranteed, almost. So golfing is always with us. The people are just lovely. The Mexican people are warm, compassionate. It's just nice to be here.

KRAUSE [voice-over]: Bill and Lee Reder live most of the year in Southfield, Michigan. Every winter they spend two or three months in Ahihik.(?)

LEE REDER: Our life is beautiful, but I would call it, in one word, rather hedonistic. We are enjoying ourselves to the utmost.

KRAUSE [voice-over]: Once a tiny fishing village, Ahihik has been transformed into a wealthy retirement community which caters to foreigners. Satellite dishes -- many homes have them so Americans living here can watch their favorite television programs from the United States. The local supermarket, known as the Super Greasy. Plenty of Jell-o, Marlboros, even sandals made by Dr. Scholl. For the more adventuresome there's the local fish and vegetable market. Here, as in the rest of Ahihik, it helps to speak Spanish. But since most Americans don't, there's usually a Mexican nearby who can translate. Food, and almost everything else in Mexico, is cheap for foreigners. That's the reason why more Americans continue to live and vacation here than in any other country in the world. Mexico is a bargain. The cost of housing, for example. This home would probably cost a million or more in Palm Beach or Palm Springs. In Ahihik it's on the market for only a fifth of that, about $200,000. And many Americans living here can afford a maid, a cook and a gardener for about $300 a month. Esther Coster owns a large home in Ahihik and employs a full staff. She says she can live well for about a thousand dollars a month.

ESTHER COSTER: How could I live in the States on that amount with three servants? And for instance, the tax on this land is only $150 a year. Doctors are cheaper, hospitals are cheaper, clothes are cheaper. What else?

Mrs. REDER: One thing I can mention, I just had my hair cut three weeks ago for 300 pesos, which in American money is about a dollar and a half.

Mr. REDER: And our rents are just laughable almost -- anywhere from $300 to $500 a month for a palatial home or a medium home.

KRAUSE: The Mexicans, the people from the village of Ahihik, do you think they like having all these relatively well-to-do Americans living among them?

Mrs. COSTER: Very much so because they gain by it in a sense, and also we are kind to them. Latin American ladies who have servants are apt to be, I won't say stricter, but they don't give as much kindness and TLC as we gringos do.

KRAUSE [voice-over]: The Mexicans we talked to agreed with Mrs. Coster, if not about the tender loving care, then at the very least about the economic benefits to them of having so many Americans in Ahihik. Most of the townspeople work as maids or cooks, but others have learned trades and sell most of what they make to the American community.

[on camera] But not everything is perfect in paradise. Although most Americans say they're not worried about crime or drugs, privately some of them say they are concerned that Mexico's serious economic problems could lead to political instability, which would threaten their idyllic life here in Ahihik.

[voice-over] While the Mexicans who live in Ahihik are better off than many of their countrymen, the contrasts between rich and poor even here are striking. In the view of many observers, Mexico's current economic crisis is beginning to tax the country's political institutions. Economic instability has even hurt Americans who've invested dollars here.

Mrs. COSTER: A lot of our friends who had never lived abroad came down here when the peso was really something and brought -- some of them brought all their dollars down here and invested them, and when the peso fell, think what they lost. Disaster.

KRAUSE [voice-over]: Mrs. Coster is no stranger to political turmoil. She lived through the Cuban revolution.

Mrs. COSTER: Indeed I did, and was evacuated from there with all the oil company wives and children. There are always political problems in all of these countries, but I'm not worried about Mexico at the moment. No, I don't think it would turn communist as it did in Cuba under Fidel Castro.

KRAUSE [voice-over]: Mexico may not be for everyone, but at the end of the day those Americans who live and vacation along the shores of Lake Chapala see nothing on the horizon yet to cause them serious worry. There is some concern about the future, but for now there's no panic in paradise. AIDS: Quest for a Cure

MacNEIL: The news today that actor Rock Hudson is being treated for AIDS will focus new attention on this deadly disease and on hopes for finding a cure. Up until now the outlook has been bleak for the more than 11,000 Americans with AIDS, but not everyone has been willing to accept that. Tonight we have the story of one young man who is determined to beat the odds.

JOHN COFFEE: I never accepted the prognosis that, you know, you have a disease which will inevitably kill you. I didn't buy that from the start.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Last year 30-year-old John Coffee was on the fast track to success. A graduate of Princeton, he had a high-paying, high-power job at a Manhattan ad agency. With his wife, Meg, a public relations executive, he was living out his dream in Westport, Connecticut. But as a mild hemophiliac, John needed occasional infusions of a clotting factor made from donated blood, and apparently one of those treatments was contaminated. In March 1984 he learned he had AIDS.

Mr. COFFEE: It just seemed like the odds were so slim. There are 20,000 hemophiliacs in the country and 14 cases of it, and I'm so mild and my exposure has been so limited, you know, why me?

MEG COFFEE: It was a big blow, but his reaction was, "I'm going to get better, I'm going to be the first person cured, I'm going to beat this thing."

MacNEIL [voice-over]: John and Meg pinned their hopes for his survival on the cutting edge of medical science. He decided to volunteer for some highly experimental and risky treatments. They came with no guarantees.

Mr. COFFEE: The first one was what's called a thymic implant in my forearm muscle.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Doctors first hoped they could use tissue from the thymus, the so-called master gland of the immune system, to restore John's ability to fight disease. Then they tried a second implant, this time in his thigh, along with an immune boosting drug called Interleukin-2.

Mr. COFFEE: They didn't work. Simple as that. The second one actually, not only did it not work but it caused lots of complications with bleeding and I was in a good deal of pain for several -- oh, for about two and a half months after it.

Mrs. COFFEE: If he had said, "Look, I am hanging this up. I can't stand this any longer," I would understand so easily, because I see what he has to go through.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: But John was not deterred.

Mr. COFFEE: It's important to be part of every study, because if you sit here you are going to die. There's just no doubt about that.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Being a guinea pig became John Coffee's full-time job, and that's what brought him here to Atlanta in April when the world's experts gathered for a conference on AIDS.

FRENCH SCIENTIST: Eight patients were followed after treatment for viral isolation.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: John came to here a team of French scientists report on a promising new drug called HPA-23. What made it special was that it actually had worked, at least temporarily, on a handful of patients. It had knocked out the AIDS virus. John had learned about the drug and applied for it weeks earlier, but didn't know if he'd be accepted. So he took the bold step of seeking out the French researchers in person.

Mr. COFFEE [April 15, 1985]: I didn't want them to take sympathy on me or pity me. It was more -- I just thought that this was the most effective way to address some of the issues that seemed to be in the way.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: His boldness paid off. Dr. Francoise Barre-Sinousi had run tests on John's blood to see if he was still healthy enough to benefit from the drug. Here in Atlanta she told him the results were just in and he'd passed.

Mr. COFFEE [April]: So do you think there's any problem with beginning treatment? I know you can't speak for Dr. Dormant but --

Dr. FRANCOISE BARRE SINOUSI: Yeah, when I will be back I will discuss with Dormant. I think there's no problem; you can come.

Mr. COFFEE: I've had an awful lot of bad luck over the last 15 or 16 months. So every once in a while it seems like we get a break and this is potentially a real big break.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: It was also a lucky break. The French have exclusive control of the drug, which is available only in Paris. And researchers at the Pasteur Institute have been flooded with pleas from dying AIDS patients ever since word of the drug came out at a February press conference.

FRENCH SCIENTIST [February 8, 1985]: I repeat, HPA-23 is inhibiting the replication of the virus, and that do not mean that we are curing the patient. That mean we are inhibiting one of the component of the disease.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: It wasn't a cure, but it was a glimmer of hope, and thousands wanted a crack at it. But the researchers could test only a few dozen patients at a time. John got to be one of them, in part because his New York doctor, Michael Lange, was collaborating with the French researchers.

Dr. MICHAEL LANGE, St. Luke-Roosevelt Hospitals: Well, I think he's a highly intelligent and highly motivated person, and he knows sort of as much and is aware of what's available on the forefront of fighting this disease as anybody else. And I think it's perfectly well understandable that he's, knowing what he knows about the present outlook, that he's willing to try anything.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Back home in Connecticut, John had only a few days to rest before leaving for his treatment in Paris.

Mrs. COFFEE: When you see a 30-year-old man who two years before was athletic and strong, whittling away down to nothing and not even being able to, you know, go outside and walk around much or go up a flight of steps because it winds him -- I mean, that's just awful.

Mr. COFFEE: I mean, I want to be optimistic because I think that that's important, to have a proper attitude. But I don't see France as a miracle cure. I see France as a way to buy me probably more time than anything else.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: When he got to Paris, though, in late April, John could do little more than mark time. Dr. Dominique Dormant told him he might not get the drug after all.

Mr. COFFEE: He basically claimed no knowledge of me. He said he didn't even know my name.

MacNEIL: But after another exhaustive battery of tests, the answer was finally yes. The doctor recommended a three-month treatment of small daily doses. But John instead demanded an intense two-week program, which meant getting high doses intravenously three hours a day every day.

Mr. COFFEE [Paris, May 31]: I really didn't want to be away from my wife and my family and my friends and my culture for so long as three months or even longer. So I'm glad that I've done it, but it hasn't been easy. Paris in the spring has not been all it's usually cracked up to be, especially this spring.

Mrs. COFFEE: When he got home he was absolutely a wreck for a few days. He was completely exhausted. He was shaky. I mean, we joked, although it's not really funny, but it was sort of like having a prisoner of war get home.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: The treatment made John nauseous and weak. He felt sicker than he'd ever been. But a month later he got the news he never thought he'd hear: the drug worked.

Mr. COFFEE [July 22]: And his words were, "The treatment was effective."

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Tests showed that John's virus had in fact disappeared, at least temporarily. But the big question remained.

Mr. COFFEE: So I guess the obvious thing on my mind is, what's this mean in terms of my longevity?

Dr. LANGE: To be totally honest with you, I don't think we have that information yet. As you I'm sure know very well, the virus can come back.

Mr. COFFEE: So at this stage is there anything to be done?

Dr. LANGE: I think essentially we should try to culture your blood once every two months and make sure that the virus isn't coming back.

Mrs. COFFEE: I think this is where it's sort of, it's great now, I have good news and I have bad news. Good news: the virus seems to be gone from your blood. Bad news: we really don't quite know what to do yet and what the next step is. I could say, oh, I want him to be cured. But that's not -- that's not realistic at this point. That's just -- that's the long-term goal that I secretly hope and pray for, you know, I can't tell you how many times.

MacNEIL: At a news conference today in Washington, the secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, was asked why the drug is not available in the United States.

MARGARET HECKLER, Secretary of Health and Human Services: Well, the HPA-23 is used in France. It has very, very serious toxic adverse reactions when discontinued. It is at the same time a drug that will be tested in the United States. At the present time there is no applicant from the drug industry for permission to test the drug. However, it will be tested, and we have three other drugs under current testing in our clinical centers which are dealing with the same problem and have in some cases less toxic side effects. But I have to say that I have visited the Pasteur Institute during a recent trip to Paris and met with the director and some of the leaders there, and they do not hold any great magical effect to the HPA-23 drug. They are testing it as we are testing others, and we are hoping to find just the right answer of combination of drugs. But this is not a panacea by any means. It is a drug with very, very toxic side effects.

MacNEIL: Tonight John Coffee is in the hospital suffering from a possible infection. But his wife said today he's still incredibly optimistic about his future. The drug that he received, by the way, is believed to be the same one given to Rock Hudson, who we learned today is suffering from AIDS and is in a hospital in Paris. Here to tell us more about this is John Coffee's doctor, Michael Lange, a specialist in AIDS research at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospitals in New York.

First of all, Secretary Heckler's remarks about the drug HPA-23. Is it your experience that there are very serious toxic side effects when it's discontinued?

Dr. MICHAEL LANGE: I cannot really say that. I have seen three people coming back from France after receiving HPA-23, and what -- the only finding that we have had in some is that they have been somewhat anemic, requiring a blood transfusion. That has usually just been the case once, and a second blood transfusion was not necessary. The side effects that occurred during treatment is that the platelets which are needed for clotting in the blood can go down and liver function tests can become somewhat abnormal. All of these, from what I've been told by Dr. Dormant, and Rosenbaum in Paris, have revert to normal after the drug is stopped. But the drug had to be discontinued early in some patients.

MacNEIL: Does that mean that you would not, as a doctor who's seen patients use it, you wouldn't be as worried about the side effects as Secretary Heckler was? Is that --

Dr. LANGE: No, I do not think that the evidence that I have been familiar with, that I have heard from Dr. Rosenbaum and Dormant, who do most of the clinical trials in Paris, lead me to believe that they are potentially -- that this is a very toxic drug. I think there are certain side effects with any drug, and I think the secretary's very correct in saying that there are other agents that should be tried.

MacNEIL: So far is this the only drug that has shown that it can cause the virus to go away?

Dr. LANGE: It is the only drug where the human experimentation has gone to the point where we have this body of information. The other three drugs that the secretary was referring to are phosphonoformate, Ribovirun(?) and suramin, all three of which do this in the test tube. Suramine has been tried in a very small number of patients at the NIH and we don't really have any data as to what percent the virus did disappear, but it did disappear in some people.

MacNEIL: Right. Now, for those people living understandably with very great anxiety about the disease, either having it or knowing someone who has, can we put the improvement in Mr. Coffee's condition in perspective? Is this a cure, first of all?

Dr. LANGE: No, I think it's perfectly correct to say that this is not a cure, and if you look at the press conference that you just showed, Dr. Chermont said so back in New York when he made the announcement in February. Any of these four agents don't even give us a hope to have a cure. What we hope to do is arrest the virus -- we cannot eliminate it totally -- and either slow down the disease or cause a remission of the disease similar to what we can achieve in leukemia.

MacNEIL: Now, if the virus is arrested or disappears, does that mean that Mr. Coffee's immune system springs back to normal, that he then gradually resumes his resistance to disease or infection?

Dr. LANGE: I think that -- we don't really believe so. But the possibility of whether this will occur or not is something that we will know I think after about two years following people who have been treated. With simple virus infections the immune system, particularly the T-cells, often remain somewhat abnormal for up to a year. Since this is a new virus we don't even know the natural history.

MacNEIL: By other viruses, what, do you mean like flus?

Dr. LANGE: No, cytomegalovirus,(?) and herpes particularly, it has been shown that T-cell ratios, for example, remain abnormal for up to a year after an acute infection.

MacNEIL: A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Charles Fallus,(?) was quoted by the Associated Press as saying today, "We know of no patient who has regained the total strength of their depleted immune system." Is that your experience?

Dr. LANGE: Yes, it's my experience too. I agree with that.

MacNEIL: So, now, can a -- what then does this say? Supposing this drug became more widely available and patients had the experience Mr. Coffee's had, does that mean that although their immune system mightn't return fully to normal, that they could resist disease enough with the help of drugs that they could survive?

Dr. LANGE: That is essentially our hope. And we do know that the virus is in many people years before they get actually sick with true clinical AIDS. If the virus destroys lymphocytes at various rates, and we can arrest it from growing and forming more particles and affecting more lymphocytes, the hope is that there may be enough lymphocytes --

MacNEIL: The lymohocytes are what, the particles --

Dr. LANGE: The lymphocytes are the type of white blood cells that are affected by the retrovirus that causes AIDS. And it's the T helper cell, the T helper lymphocyte, that is mostly destroyed in this disease and that results in the severe immunodeficiency.

MacNEIL: I see. Are there other things that can be done to rebuild the immune system, to strengthen the immune system, or is that beyond medical knowledge at the moment?

Dr. LANGE: I mean, it certainly is a very attractive theoretical idea. And people -- we have been through several trials where we had hoped that this would be the effect. John mentioned that he received Interleukin-2, which was one such substance. Alpha and gamma interferon were hoped to be able to do that. Isoprynis is another drug that recently received a fair amount of attention. But so far we don't really have any evidence that these hopes are based on fact. It hasn't happened. And John's statement, you know, that none of this has worked is really not that untrue.

MacNEIL: Is this a disease still very much out of control? It's affected, we understand, 11,000 people in this country; more than 5,000 of them have died. Is this still an out-of-control disease?

Dr. LANGE: I think the evidence is very, very much in favor of it being out of control. We have known, and it was very nicely summarized for us at the Atlanta conference in April, that it is quite widespread in the Third World, and also that The New England Journal of Medicine, which is a relatively conservative journal, predicted already in February of this year that we will have 16,000 new cases diagnosed in 1986, which is more than the total of what has gone on before.

MacNEIL: There was a report today from Australia that four women who had been artificially inseminated from the same male donor had contracted AIDS disease. Does that suggest to you that there are ramifications of it spreading -- there are new possibilities of it spreading that haven't been realized yet?

Dr. LANGE: I hadn't heard that report, but I think that it's clearly possible. And the evidence that has come around this last -- these last six months I would say very clearly points towards the fact that this is probably a sexually transmitted disease. We should think of AIDS as a VD, as a venereal disease, not something that is strictly going to be confined to homosexual people, to drug addicts. I think that we are all at risk, and we don't know the end -- there's no end in sight to this disease at this point in time, I think.

MacNEIL: Dr. Lange, thank you for joining us.

Dr. LANGE: Thank you. Sunken Treasures

LEHRER: Finally tonight, the exotic story of divers and a Spanish galleon that wrecked off the coast of Florida 300 years ago. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has more. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Jim, what they found was the booty from a 17th-century Spanish ship that had been on the way from Havana to deliver riches of the New World to the king of Spain. But that ship, the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, sank in a hurricane shortly after departure. Since the discovery of the shipwreck some 40 miles off the coast of Key West, Florida, the treasure has continued to awe investors and scientists alike. Early estimates put the value of the gold, silver and other objects at some $400 million. But the treasure itself can't be measured in dollars alone. Earlier I talked with the chief archeologist of the salvage team, R. Duncan Mathewson. He is one of the divers with Treasure Salvors, Inc., which found the wreckage.

Mr. Mathewson, first, can you explain why can't this treasure be measured in dollars alone?

R. DUNCAN MATHEWSON: Well, each time a ship sinks to the bottom of the sea, time stands still. And these shipwrecks are wonderful time capsules of history. And as we scientifically explore them and their contents, we're learning a lot more about life under sail and about a number of things that the history books don't tell us.

HUNTER-GAULT: Like what?

Mr. MATHEWSON: Well, that information is so valuable. It tells us about the ships themselves, about how they were built. It tells us about the types of cargo being shipped halfway around the world. It tells us a lot about what Spain was like back in the 17th century.

HUNTER-GAULT: I've read that this discovery is as important as the discovery of Pompeii or King Tut's tomb. Was that hyperbole?

Mr. MATHEWSON: No, not at all. We in fact know far more about Greek and Roman ships than we know about Spanish 17th-century ships. And this site is opening up a whole new chapter in the maritime culture and the seafaring history of the Americas.

HUNTER-GAULT: Specifically, what are some of the things your divers have recovered from the shipwreck?

Mr. MATHEWSON: Well, we have already recovered and mapped a whole wide range of artifacts. We have silver ingots, copper ingots, all types of pottery, navigational instruments, jewelry, gold bars, gold chain, all types of ships' rigging. It's just a microcosm of Spain and her colonial American colonies in the late 16th and early 17th century.

HUNTER-GAULT: Have you found anything that surprised you?

Mr. MATHEWSON: A number of things that are very, very surprising. We have a whole wide range of different types of gold chain, and we're puzzling, where does the chain come from? Was all this chain made in the New World by Indian craftsmen working under Spanish supervision, or was this chain belonging to some of the affluent passengers traveling back to Spain on board the Atocha when she sank?

HUNTER-GAULT: You've been down there and seen all of this for yourself. Can you possibly describe what it looked like, in words?

Mr. MATHEWSON: Well, it's just a magnificent sight. Very few divers have the opportunity to explore a virgin shipwreck. And this shipwreck is very exciting. It's about 100 feet long, about 50 or 60 feet wide, and parts of this site have a stratigraphy of about five feet.

HUNTER-GAULT: The what?

Mr. MATHEWSON: There's a mound, about a five-foot mound, and this is very exciting because contained within that mound are the contents of the lower hull, personal effects, and the ship's supplies. And as we explore that mound, we're going to be defining a number of different categories of artifacts which will open up brand-new areas of research.

HUNTER-GAULT: And all of these things are in good condition? Do you have to cut through any kind of barnacles and things that obscure what they really are, or are they just out there in plain sight?

Mr. MATHEWSON: Well, a lot of the artifacts are enclosed within a large pile of ballast rock. And the ballast rock was important because it provided the stability for the sailing ship. And so what we've got to do is very carefully explore this ballast rock, removing the ballast as we examine the artifacts throughout the pile.

HUNTER-GAULT: Did you know much about the ship, the Atocha, before you found her, or is everything that you're learning coming from the material that you're finding there?

Mr. MATHEWSON: We knew an awful lot about the history of the Atocha because Dr. Eugene Lyons has been doing many, many years of research on her. And due to his fine research efforts, he was able to find not only the manifest, which gave us a list of the cargo that was on her when she sank, but also the fleet papers, also a lot of background, historical material pertaining to the unsuccessful salvage of the Atocha. And by piecing all this historical information together, coupling that with the breakup of the vessel that we're getting from the evidence from the seabed, we're able to write a whole new social history of Spanish maritime culture of the New World.

HUNTER-GAULT: That's really incredible. I read that millions of dollars have gone into the search for this ship and there are people who have invested in it for profit. How much of a conflict is there between the treasure hunter in you and others and the scientist in you and others, who presumably would want to preserve a lot of this stuff for posterity while the treasure hunters would want to profit from it?

Mr. MATHEWSON: Well, there's always an ongoing conflict when one is trying to do good scientific archeology within a salvage operation such as this. But over the years I have been very successful in working with the profit motive in getting the archeological divers to become more aware that we're doing archeological salvage. We're not doing treasure hunting. Treasure hunting means that someone goes in and grabs the goodies and runs without any effort to record the archeological information, the interrelationships between the various artifacts.

HUNTER-GAULT: Where is it all going to end up?

Mr. MATHEWSON: A lot of the material will end up in museums. Material that investors get through artifact divisions will eventually I'm sure end up in museums, and we're very, very hopeful that we can get a lot of the material together in a large assemblage and donate it to a number of museums around the country.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, I'm hopeful too, because I'd love to see it all. Thank you very much, Mr. Mathewson, for being with us.

LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this day. They are about South Africa. Five blacks died and 16 more were wounded in a riotous clash with police near Johannesburg. And the United Nations Security Council debated a French resolution calling for a worldwide economic boycott and other sanctions against South Africa.

Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.