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From: mason@pneuma.DEC (ANDREA 223-4864 PK03-2/H31 POLE 15F)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: More on AIDS and Health Workers
Message-ID: <1026@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Oct-85 09:19:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1026
Posted: Thu Oct 24 09:19:36 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 03:39:02 EDT
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Reprinted from the Boston Globe (Thursday, 10/17/85)

"STUDY SAYS SURGEON WITH AIDS INFECTED NO ONE"
Associated Press

A Florida surgeon with acquired immune deficiency syndrome operated on 
hundreds of patients without passing on the disease, supporting the 
belief that AIDS-infected health workers can safely treat patients, a 
study says.

The doctor, who was not identified, died of AIDS two years ago and 
researchers attempted to contact all of the patients he treated 
between 1978 and 1983.  As of August, no AIDS cases had been reported 
among those patients.

"This study of 400 persons found no evidence that transmission of AIDS 
to patients had occurred and nothing to suggest that the surgeon 
should not have been practicing," wrote Dr Jeffrey J. Sacks of 
Florida's Health and Rehabilitative Services Dept. and the US Centers 
for Disease Control.

For 347 of the 400 patients, three years had elapsed since their 
surgery.  For the rest, at least two years had passed.

Sacks' report, published as a letter in today's edition of the New 
England Journal of Medicine, said that theoretically the disease could 
be transmitted if an infected health care worker accidently bled into 
a patient's open wound.  

Sacks noted that more than 200 health care workers have been reported 
to have AIDS, nearly all of them having acquired the disease because 
they are members of groups at high risk.