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federal health officials consider it an epidemic. Yet you rarely hear a thing about it. At first, it seemed to strike only one segment of the population. Now Barry Petersen tells us, this is no longer the case. It was devastating. At that time. I was 29 years

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old. To be told that I had cancer was just it to turn me around. Bobbi Campbell is fighting for his life, one of a rapidly growing group whose battle has fascinated and frightened modern medicine. He has Kaposi's sarcoma, a deadly skin cancer that first appeared on

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the bottom of his feet as spots the size of a quarter. There is a one in five chance of victim will die within the first year of the illness. It's a disease first detected in the gay community that has now spread beyond that, a disease experts

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are now calling a national epidemic. There are more lives, claimed victims claimed then then toxic shock and legionnaires disease combined. And yet most of the country doesn't know about this cancer. Well, I think it's because it's a gay cancer. It appeared a year ago in New

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York's gay community, then in the gay communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Now it's been detected in Haitian refugees. No one knows why. And in heavy drug users, especially in New York City, no one knows why. And in some people with hemophilia, a disease that

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prevents blood clotting so the patient needs frequent blood transfusions. Why at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, where 400 cases have been reported, a special task force has now been set up. One possibility. A rare herpes virus may attack the body's immune system, bringing with

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it the cancer or a lethal form of pneumonia. By finding the cause of this, we may be able to dissect out that part of the immune system that prevents cancer in general. And there are more wise. Why just certain geographic areas? Why just certain groups? And

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most frightening the possibility that the virus can be transmitted from person to person, virtually a contagious form of cancer. Specialists argue that millions of dollars should be spent for research. Now what we can learn from this group of individuals about cancer in general, how it's transmitted,

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what causes it and hopefully how to stop it is absolutely unbelievable, But there is almost no money being spent so far. One New York group is raising a few $1000 for research by selling T shirts. What did the spots look like in San Francisco? A. Kaposi's

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Sarcoma hotline open, supported by private donations. Bobbi Campbell spends one morning a week at the hospital for chemotherapy for a disease that at the moment has not spread. When I came down with this disease, I found this button. It absolutely reflected my position. You know, I

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I may be down, but not out. For Bobby Campbell, it is a race against time. How long before he and others who have this disease finally have answers finally have the hope of a cure? Barry Petersen, CBS News, San Francisco.