French patient contracts AIDS from surgeon

A French surgeon with AIDS has transmitted the disease to one of his patients. Until now only one similar case has been reported worldwide_that of a dentist in Florida who is believed to have contaminated five of his patients.

Dr Patrick Cohen of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, a specialist in orthopaedic surgery and traumatology, is believed to have become infected with HIV in 1983 when he carried out a femoral prosthesis operation on a woman who had received several blood transfusions. At the time AIDS was still a rarity, and …