the marginalisation the denial and the violation of the most fundamental human

the marginalisation, the denial and the violation of the most fundamental
human rights,’ she said. We have enough
work to do in the night.’

Ruth Morgan-Thomas, project co-ordinator for the Scottish Prostitutes
Education Project, who is HIV positive, said that the experience of Asian
and European prostitutes was similar: ‘The common threads are there. There was
solidarity among the sex workers.’

But Paulo Longo, a Brazilian male prostitute from Rio de Janeiro, said this
form of ‘peer’ education was a way of denying prostitutes care and
education ‘We can’t go around all night educating our peers. ‘The difference was
that the women take control of their own business, no middlemen, no
brothels, direct negotiations between the women and clients. ‘Prostitutes have always
been regarded as the reservoir and carriers of the disease, and never as the
victim,’ she said.

A Filipino prostitute said: ‘Our biggest problem is that the client will just
walk away and go to the next girl who won’t insist on using one.’

However, Dr Pushpa Batt described a successful condom campaign in the Badii
community in western Nepal, where prostitutes serve Indian and Nepali
clients. Otherwise we belong to the streets.’ Women who insisted on clients
using a condom brought on themselves ‘the wrath of the brothel- keeper’.

A Indian social worker said that the low status of prostitutes meant they
could not take the lead in making men wear condoms.

‘Until that changes,
no matter how many of you peddle the myth of Aids education and health
promotion, until the very fundamentals change, then educating people is
really just a band-aid,’ she said.

An Asian worker described the conditions that thousands of prostitutes in
India had to contend with: ‘Fifteen to 20 adults using a small single
brothel and a toilet Women must always pay for their water. CORRECTION (PUBLISHED 20 SEPTEMBER 1994) APPENDED TO THIS ARTICLE

PROSTITUTES and workers in the sex industry from all over the world met at the
conference yesterday to demand equal rights with all other workers and
better protection from the threat of HIV.

A member of the London network of sex workers’ projects said that
decriminalisation of prostitution was the first step. But because healthy cells do not proliferate at the same rate as cancer cells, Daca is expected to have a minimal effect on them.Dr Sue Foden, managing director of CRCT, and the scientists who discovered the drug ‘languishing’ on the laboratory shelves of the Auckland Cancer Society, said: ‘This really makes Daca a very promising candidate for second-line treatment where earlier drugs have failed, or for combination therapy with other known agents.’Even if Daca does live up to expectations it is unlikely to be on the market before the end of the decade.CORRECTIONXENOVA, the biotechnology company, was last month floated on the Nasdaq stock market in New York, and not on the New York Stock Exchange in our story about a new drug for cancer.. It also has potential for treating brain tumours, notoriously difficult to treat with drugs, because it penetrates the blood-brain barrier.A trial involving about 30 terminally-ill cancer patients who have tried all conventional forms of therapy began six weeks ago at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. ‘Hitting them both at the same time is better than hitting one and then the other.’In addition, Daca is effective against tumours which are resistant to existing drug therapy. Some tumours can ‘pump out’ drugs before they have any effect, but Daca seems to overcome this.

CRC scientists found that it had a ‘unique’ ability to knock out two vital enzymes, known as topo-1 and topo-2, which are needed for tumour growth, and the uncontrolled replication of cancer cells.Dr Paul Bevan, research director of Xenova, which has formed a partnership with CRCT, the technology transfer arm of the charity, said: ‘No other compound has this dual action. It stops the tumour dead in its tracks and shrinks it.’Other drugs can block one or other of the enzymes, but blocking both appears to have a synergistic effect, Dr Bevan added. Louis Nisbet, chief executive of the company, said that Xenova was ‘considering, among other options’ flotation on the London stock exchange.The drug, known as Daca, was discovered by New Zealand cancer researchers some years ago, but was not developed or its full potential realised. The survival rate after five years is about 7 per cent.However, a leading cancer specialist, who asked not to be named, said that high-profile announcement was ‘premature in the extreme’ He added: ‘We are talking up test-tube results here. It also denied that it was under commercial pressure.A spokeswoman for the CRC said last night: ‘We have seen remarkable results in laboratory tests at low doses, which is why we have decided to make the announcement.