*****1998***** * Although the Department od Health and Human Services determines the needle-exchange programs are effective and don;t encourage illegal drug use, President Clinton does not lift the ban on using federal funds for them. * African-American leaders declare and AIDS-related state of emergency in black communities and launch the Minority AIDS Initiative. * In June the U.S. Supreme Court rules that asymptomatic HIVers are protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act. * Congress authorizes payments to hemophiliacs infected through unscreened U.S. blood products between 1982 and 1987. * A report says U.S. AIDS deaths were halved in 1997, down to their lowest levels in a decade. AIDS falls out of the top 10 causes of death among Americans. * David Ho presents evidence at the Fifth Confrence on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections that HIV most likely first infected humans in the 1940s or early 1950s. Eventual research verifies that the first known AIDS death when HIV-1 is found in the blood samples of an African man who died in 1959, The first U.S. case is traced to a teen prostitute with Kaposi's sarcoma who died in 1969.