RELATED ITEMS On washingtonpost.com Corporate information on companies seeking an AIDS vaccine: Chiron SmithKline Beecham Merck & Co. On the Web The AIDS Education Global Information System has scientific information about canarypox tests available online. The estimated 1997 budget for the National Institutes of Health is online. The AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition published a December 1996 report on the status of finding a vaccine. A press release from the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care describes their call for doctors to volunteer as subjects. From the AP Related articles from the Associated Press are available online. Editor's Note: Some of the above links will take you out of The Post's Web site. To return, use the Backbutton on your browser. Go to National Section Go to Home Page

The team has also been doing the plodding but essential studies of various "informed consent" procedures to see which are most effective at making people understand the risks of participating. The system they've developed involves at least three personal counseling sessions and an educational video, followed by a written exam that volunteers must pass.

With all the caveats — the warnings of harm, the inability to assure any benefits — it sometimes seems miraculous that people continue to sign up. In many cases, volunteers also face criticism from friends or family members who do not understand their motivation.

"My mom didn't want me to be in a study because she thought I might get infected from the vaccine," said HIVNET organizer Mitchell, who describes himself as the sole "queen" in an otherwise snapshot-perfect Mormon family from Utah. "I said to her, 'What's the difference between my brothers or my father going to war, putting their lives at risk, and me doing this?' I'm putting myself at risk for my community. To me it's just a different war.

"And in this war," he said slyly, after a pause, "I get to wear what I like."

Even with all the work that has gone into preparing volunteers, things do not always go smoothly, said Heidi Israel, who coordinates a St. Louis clinic that is the site of several ongoing phase I and phase II AIDS vaccine trials.

In one recent and typical case, she said, the wife of a volunteer suddenly became concerned that she might get AIDS from having sex with her husband. Additional counseling took care of the problem. In another case, an engineer who at first seemed comfortable with all the scientific details of the trial became increasingly distraught in the weeks after he got inoculated. "He was freaking out," Israel said. "Every time he got a cold or an infection he thought it was related to the vaccine. We gave him a lot of emotional support and spent a lot of time with him." Eventually he settled down, she said.

Foremost among the worries of many would-be volunteers is the problem of forever testing positive for AIDS antibodies. Participants are given glossy U.S. Public Health Service cards verifying that they are participants in an AIDS vaccine trial, but the cards stop short of verifying that the person is not also infected with HIV. And although sophisticated laboratory tests can usually tell the difference between AIDS antibodies caused by a vaccine and those that indicate a real HIV infection, few laboratories are equipped to make that distinction. Moreover, as vaccines get better by more closely mimicking a real infection, it will become more difficult to distinguish between the two.

Just recently, Israel said, a St. Louis man got into trouble when he decided to buy additional life insurance just six weeks after participating in a trial that made him HIV-antibody positive. "The regional representative said just the fact that he had volunteered for the trial" suggested he might be a member of a high-risk group, she said. Although the company eventually gave in and upgraded the man's policy, researchers suspect that similar problems will become increasingly commonplace in coming years.

For many, such hassles are a small price to pay considering the magnitude of devastation being wrought by the AIDS epidemic. Leonard Smith, 28, an administrative secretary at the St. Louis clinic and a volunteer in the canarypox trial, says he intends to wear his vaccine-induced HIV-positive status as proudly as he wears the thimble-sized amulet, called a gau, around his neck. The silver gau is engraved with a simple inscription: "1969-1995." It is filled with about a tablespoon of ashes, some of the final remains of Smith's best friend who died of AIDS two years ago.

Slowly, some protections — or at least fewer accusatory presumptions — are coming into place. In New York City, laboratory slips printed by the Department of Health now ask the technician drawing blood to check a box if the person being tested has volunteered in an AIDS vaccine trial — recognition of a new generation of uninfected HIV positives.

Public health officials also are pushing to have wording on HIV antibody test kits changed to note that positive results are not valid if the person has participated in an AIDS vaccine trial. And activists are advocating increased use of the phrase "HIV antibody positive" rather than "HIV positive," a more precise and less judgmental description of a person's status.

Changes like these may seem small, but they are extremely significant to people who have been working for more than a decade to find an effective AIDS vaccine, and for the many millions who could benefit. They are changes that offer the first dramatic glimpses of a future that until recently was unimaginable: one in which HIV antibody positive status will be seen not as a curse, as it is today, but as an emblem of protection, a symbol of good health, and a badge of victory over a vanquished scourge.