Wish by Some to Spread AIDS Sparks Fear in Brazil

Late one Friday afternoon last October, a 31-year-old homosexual with AIDS visited a local treatment center feeling depressed.

He had murder on his mind. Lonely and distraught, he had been planning a sexual binge to spread the fatal acquired immune deficiency syndrome widely through Campinas, a city of 850,000 about an hour’s drive north of Sao Paulo.

Silvia Bellucci, an immunologist at the center, recognized the killer urge. She had seen the same impulse numerous times before in other AIDS victims, this macabre wish to pass the deadly virus to unsuspecting others.

She also knew the visitor from his attendance at group therapy sessions. He is a systems analyst at a data processing firm and the father of two daughters. Three years ago, he began having homosexual relations and got AIDS.

Sad Birthday

Bellucci comforted the would-be murderer and drew him back to his senses.

“He sat right here on the couch,” Belluci said. “It was his birthday and he said he was feeling sad and anxious. No one had done anything to celebrate the day. He started crying and said he had been thinking of going out and spreading AIDS to at least 50 people. I cried with him, and then we talked for an hour and a half until he calmed down.”

Second to the United States in the number of reported AIDS cases, Brazil is now confronting the threat of willful transmission of the disease. Medical experts here say the desire to spread the incurable virus occurs in victims elsewhere but seems to have received more widespread publicity in Brazil.

Simply identifying the sufferers of AIDS and easing the physical pain of their final days is said to be insufficient both for the victims and for everyone else’s protection. The illness demands psychological care. But in developing countries like Brazil, already hard-pressed to provide even basic medical services, the complications and traumas of AIDS go largely untreated.

20 Infected at Party

In one unpublicized case two months ago, according to the center where Bellucci works, a 29-year-old drug addict who knew he was close to dying of AIDS gave a party in Campinas. Without confessing his condition, he passed around a syringe of cocaine diluted with his own infected blood, exposing about 20 people, ranging in age from 15 to 25, to the risk of contamination. They are now being seen at the center.

In the southern city of Florianopolis, residents have been terrorized for two weeks by a police report of a purported pact among a small group of confessed drug addicts to disseminate AIDS. An 18-year-old girl caught stealing furniture from an apartment building where she lived told authorities of the alleged plot. She identified a married couple as the ringleaders.

They were said to have hosted drug parties at which they mixed their AIDS-infected blood with cocaine and used a single syringe to inject the poison into others. Some infected group members also are reported to have taken to prostitution to transmit the virus and raise money.

The accused have denied scheming to spread AIDS. As authorities try to establish the truth, Brazilian newspapers say that Florianopolis is in a panic and swirling with wild rumors. Those include reports that up to several hundred people may have fallen prey to the reputed plotters, that members of some prominent families are among those victimized and that schoolchildren were fed contaminated chocolates by the group. The virus is not transmitted through foods.

Resentment, Despair

Behind the urge to inflict AIDS on others lies a combination of sadistic and masochistic impulses, doctors say. Resentment against society merges with loneliness, despair and disgust with oneself.

“It is a mix of wishes to contaminate others and, as a kind of self-punishment, to be recontaminated,” said Margo Mair Marques, a psychologist who treats AIDS victims in Campinas. “It is usually a phase, part of the ups and downs of coming to terms with the disease. The urge may be triggered by a variety of situations related to a person’s relationships or personality.”

Often, the impulse is not explicitly articulated but exists subconsciously. “Some victims knowing they have AIDS keep behaving as if they were not infected,” Marques said. “Others say they are not worrying about the consequences of their actions. They say they couldn’t care less about passing on the disease. That’s really a kind of masking of the intention to infect others.”

Public insensitivity to those with AIDS has aggravated the problem, according to medical experts. Along with a growing awareness in Brazil this year to the dangers of AIDS have been reports of infected persons being expelled from jobs, run out of towns or hunted down by police. Recently, health officials ordered clinics to start reporting the names of anyone tested positive for AIDS antibodies.

Emotional Backlashes

Such measures are said to drive victims of the illness deeper into depression and emotional backlashes. Some end in suicide. In Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and the one where the majority of known AIDS cases are concentrated, 60 AIDS victims killed themselves in the first six months of this year, according to unpublicized statistics kept by a medical law institute.