AIDS to Dwarf Previous Epidemics, Official Says

WASHINGTON — A worldwide AIDS epidemic will become so serious it will dwarf such earlier medical disasters as bubonic plague, smallpox and typhoid, the nation’s health chief said Thursday.

“You haven’t heard or read anything yet,” Health and Human Services Secretary Otis R. Bowen told a National Press Club audience.

“If we can’t make progress, we face the dreadful prospect of a worldwide death toll in the tens of millions a decade,” he said.

‘Pale by Comparison’

Listing other diseases that have killed millions of people over the years, Bowen said acquired immune deficiency syndrome “will make these other ones pale by comparison.”

He said he is confident that a vaccine will be found but is equally sure it will not be in time to head off an epidemic of a scope that most people have not yet grasped.

Noting that there is no known cure, Bowen said 50 million to 100 million people worldwide could have AIDS in the next two decades and that at least 270,000 cases are expected in the United States alone in five years--with more than 10% of the new cases by then being among heterosexuals.

Carrying the Virus

Between 1 million and 1.5 million Americans are believed to be carrying the virus, and the estimates of how many of them will go on to develop AIDS have ranged from 25% to 75% or higher.

“No one really knows how many since AIDS is spread by people free of symptoms, and we don’t yet have a comprehensive national program to provide blood tests that identify AIDS carriers,” Bowen said.

AIDS is an affliction in which the body’s immune system becomes unable to resist disease.