This advisory appeared on the Reuters’ general news wires in early May 1991. It is followed by the separate written by Jim Brumm

AIDS ADVISORY
Ten years ago this week, a medical newsletter noted that a rare and mysterious ailment had afflicted five homosexual men in Los Angeles. Now known as AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), the disease has sown fear, changed lifestyles, inflamed controversy and killed thousands around the world.
To mark the anniversary of this event, Reuters is issuing the upcoming series including an overall story by Science Correspondent Irwin Arieff (AM-AIDS-DECADE) and separates on the experiences of Reuters financial correspondent Jim Brumm, whose family fostered an AIDS baby (AM-AIDS-TREE), the impact in San Francisco -- the U.S. city hit hardest by AIDS (AM-AIDS-PAIN), and the search for drugs to treat the killer disease 
(AM-AIDS-DRUGS).
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    LOVE THROUGH THE TEARS FOR A FAMILY WITH AIDS BABY
By Jim Brumm
Virgil was wrong -- love does not conquer all. If it did, Tree would still be alive.
"Tree" is our affectionate name for the little lady who came into our home -- and hearts – with several scars from her fight with the deadliest of diseases -- AIDS.
She was beautiful. In every sense of the word. And Tree's beauty included a feisty rejection of AIDS' deadly traps, which helped her come home from the hospital many times bright-eyed and ready to conquer that portion of the world she was allowed to occupy.
 	At the age of seven months, Tree suffered her first attack of PCP, a deadly form of pneumonia -- especially to young AIDS patients. The AIDS Program at the Children's Hospital of New Jersey in Newark found the median survival after diagnosis of PCP was two months; 70 percent live less than six months.
A viral infection left Tree blind in one eye and a stroke damaged her vocal cords. But she soon learned to respond to love -- first from her nurses, then from her foster family.
When one nurse could no longer leave Tree each evening without pangs of guilt, she talked it over with her family and we began the process becoming foster parents -- a task involving more paperwork than getting a security clearance from the U.S. government.
Bringing Tree home after a year in the hospital was a vivid reminder of how important a home's common things are in the development of a child who has been confined to institutional cribs, playpens, high chairs and arms for most of her life.
Crawling on the floor was a true adventure. It brought Tree close enough to a television to see the picture and push the buttons that changed the station, let her get her hands into the soil of a potted plant before our house was baby-proofed for the first time in a decade and play with a fleet of toys that grew as fast and often as various family members went shopping.
We discovered that such irritating baby habits as putting everything in the mouth are a necessary part of growing, and found it difficult to teach someone to eat who wanted nothing close to her mouth because of all the tubes that had been shoved down it to keep her alive.
      A ride in a supermarket shopping cart never lost its lure for Tree, even after she rode the Ferris wheel at Great Adventure amusement park and got a close look at Chincoteague's wild ponies.
This newest member of the family enjoyed a trip, any trip, in the car -- unless it was to the hospital where she had spent so much time.
But even this dread faded as Tree realized most trips were stops at the front door to deliver her foster mother to work, or a visit to the clinic. She also learned that even during extended stays she would never be alone again.
For her foster family, however, each of these hospital stays represented a trip into the unknown, as the doctors in the Central New Jersey pediatric AIDS Program in New Brunswick searched for a new way to fend off the attacks on this little body with no natural defenses to disease and infection.
There are few things more frightening than finding a two-year-old in a pool of her own blood -- unless it's watching the blood continue to flow into her diapers as fast as the transfusion is pumped in while the doctors search for the cause, then a cure. The doctors' search was successfully completed in a few days -- days that seemed to last forever.
When the magic drug -- cyklokapron -- was found, the bureaucracy that controls foster care medical payments threatened to keep Tree in the hospital. Local pharmacies that accept Medicaid wouldn't stock the medicine because someone had decided their reimbursement would be less than what they had to pay. And hospital pharmacies are not allowed to fill prescriptions for drugs for use outside the hospital.
The red tape was cut by the U.S. subsidiary of Kabivitrum AB, the Swedish maker of cyklokapron, which donated a supply with damaged packaging.
This wasn't the only unexpected support for our efforts.
AZT and other medicine needed by these very sick kids costs a lot of money, which Medicaid pays -- eventually. In Tree's case, our local Pathmark, part of a chain owned by Supermarkets General Corp., carried the burden of this bureaucratic slowness.
But other Pathmark pharmacies were not as helpful, refusing to honor a Medicaid card for a $10 prescription until I identified myself as a reporter. And, I wondered, what does someone on welfare do at this point?
The hospital stays were one of the few times we ran into overt discrimination against people with AIDS. We found there is no greater fear than among doctors not directly involved in treatment of the disease. For example, we found no ear, nose and throat or eye specialist in central New Jersey - including those at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey -- who was willing to treat a child with AIDS.
At church and in the neighborhood, we found nothing but support. But closer to home were relatives who no longer invited us to spend the weekend.
Tree's fight for life ended quietly one Saturday night a nearly year ago, just a few weeks after her third birthday.
Despite our belief that she'd gone to a much better place, the loss was great. It took a long time for the family to remember we had accomplished what we set out to do 16 months earlier – give a wonderful little girl as normal a life as possible, for as long as she lived.
The Foster Parents Association asks you to "touch someone." In reality, it is you who are touched. 

I
As my wife wrote at the time:
	"She touched our lives as a ray of sunshine on a warm summer day, too bright and certain to be denied and yet oh so fleeting."
The light Tree brought still shines, however.
	In mid-April, the Brumm household -- Jim, Ruth, teenagers
David and Cathy, and Ruth's mom, Marie Soden -- welcomed a 16-month-old who tested positive for HIV at birth.
Since babies carry their mother's antibodies for about two years, it is not known yet whether this little fellow is infected or not. The Centers for Disease Control estimates 65 to 75 percent of the children of HIV-infected mothers will not be infected.
Even if this child is among the unlucky minority, his prognosis is better than Tree's because of the much longer time spent before the infection evolves into full-blown AIDS and the improved treatment for people with AIDS, including children. Even better, there are many signs he is one of the majority, although we won't know for sure until he is two.
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