Aids From an M.D.?

Even after the death of Kimberly Bergalis -- the young Florida woman whose AIDS infection was blamed on her dentist -- doctors insisted that they are far more likely to get the AIDS virus from a patient than the other way around. Three new studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association seem to prove them right. Researchers identified three HIV-positive doctors -- two surgeons and a dentist -- who continued to practice almost until their death. Then the researchers tested patients -- more than 2,500 people -- who had undergone invasive procedures while the doctors were HIV-positive. Some of those patients had the AIDS virus, but none of them got it from their doctor.

An accompanying J.A.M.A. editorial found the studies reassuring but argued that it would be more convincing to start from the other end: to find one patient who got aids from a physician and then to test the doctor's other patients. That is not easy to do. Of all the doctors with AIDS, the only one who has been linked to infections in his patients is Kimberly Bergalis' dentist.