Expert tells of new A.I.D.S. threat

Press, 20 October 1986, Page 6

Expert tells of new A.I.D.S. threat

By

ROBIN CHARTERIS

in London

A new form of A.I.D.S. which could turn victims into “human vegetables” could become widespread in the next 10 years, an expert on the disease told an A.I.D.S. conference in Manchester.

Dr Jonathon Weber, who has made a four-year study of the disease at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, said that instead of attacking the bloodstream the disease could go straight to the brain.

It could cause senile dementia in young people, with catastrophic effects on society.

Victims could suffer total memory loss, undergo personality changes and become doubly incontinent, he. said. “They would ultimately become vegetables ... it is something we view with horror for the future.”

Dr Weber said A.I.D.S. could infect the brain before causing problems in the bloodstream as it did now.

"The spectre is raised in the future, maybe 10 years from now, that we may see patients affected with the virus whose immune system is fine but who are suffering from pre-senile dementia.”

Most of the sufferers would be under 30, Dr Weber said.

“How could you cope with 20,000 people (in Britain) suffering from pre-senile dementia? It would be a major nursing problem and completely unbeatable.” The conference was told that although the first case of A.I.D.S. was diagnosed as. recently as 1981, there were now 25,000 cases in the United States alone and almost three million other people likely to be affected.