Centers For Disease Control

African American smokers have higher levels of the metabolized form of nicotine in their bodies than do white smokers, providing potential clues about why blacks are less likely to quit smoking and more likely to develop lung cancer than whites, according to a study of more than 2,000 people by federal researchers published today in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

The government has conceded that the nation will not meet its goal to cut adult smoking to 15% by 2000, declaring that one of every four adults smoked in 1995. But most want to quit. A survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said an estimated 24.7% of the nation's adults, or 47 million people, were smokers in 1995, only slightly less than the 24.8% in 1994. The numbers haven't changed much since 1990. Among the smokers, 24.5 million were men and 22.4 million were women.

Declaring AIDS to be the leading cause of death among Americans between the ages of 25 and 44, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that the disease has moved dramatically into the heterosexual community and that the transmission rate there is growing. "In the history of epidemics, AIDS is among the worst in the world," CDC Director David Satcher told a gathering of Atlanta business and labor leaders.

The search for the source of tainted hamburger patties sold by Jack in the Box restaurants has been narrowed to Los Angeles-based Service Packing Co. and its suppliers, according to preliminary evidence collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. The hamburgers, contaminated with E. coli bacteria from animal feces, produced an outbreak of food poisoning primarily in the Pacific Northwest that has led to at least three deaths and hundreds of illnesses.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan on Tuesday announced a federal program that encourages businesses to help educate workers about AIDS. The program, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will help major corporations, small businesses and labor unions draft policies and start education programs aimed at preventing the spread of AIDS, protecting the rights of infected workers and eliminating false information about the disease.

The federal Centers for Disease Control said Wednesday that it will consider redefining AIDS to include illnesses peculiar to women. Aggressive cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease and yeast infections kill women infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, even though they are never counted as AIDS patients, critics said at a public meeting. "How long will women continue to die, literally on the streets?" said Wendi Alexis Modeste of Syracuse, N.Y., who has the HIV virus.

Health experts measure the cost of illness and trauma not just by the death toll but by the waste of years: The younger the dying person, the greater the waste. Using that measure, called YPLL or years of potential life lost, federal disease-watchers at the Centers for Disease Control rank the most wasteful causes of death. Such a ranking tends to emphasize killers of the young, compared with heart disease and cancer, which strike older people more than children.

Marie DeFord tells people her husband killed her. When Doug DeFord died of AIDS in 1990, Marie DeFord was mystified: Doug was a married man, and he wasn't an IV drug user. But when DeFord emptied her husband's wallet soon after his death, she found two membership cards to gay bathhouses in a nearby city. Suddenly, it all made sense. A 43-year-old mother of two from Centralia, Wash., DeFord is losing her sight from complications of the AIDS she contracted from her husband of six years.

Federal health experts recommended Thursday that infants be immunized against hepatitis B, a potentially deadly cause of liver disease, in addition to the vaccinations they currently receive. However, Los Angeles health officials said there does not appear to be any urgency in administering the vaccine here because the rate of infection has rapidly declined from 20.6% in 1986 to 6.7%. They said they are unlikely to launch a vaccination program in public clinics without new federal funds.