Faulty AIDS Test Panics W. Germans
A faulty test for AIDS led dozens of West Germans to believe they had the fatal disease, including a woman who planned her funeral, a newspaper reported.
“This woman lived with the death sentence for 56 days,” the Frankfurt Abendpost said this week. It said she wrote a final testament requesting a white casket with gold lettering for her burial. Her doctor, however, later determined that the test was faulty and that she didn’t have AIDS.
Another woman was ready to poison herself because an AIDS test had indicated her husband carried the deadly virus, the newspaper said. Three days later, the doctor said the diagnosis was wrong.
The Bavaria state Parliament’s AIDS committee said Tuesday that up to 30% of AIDS test results in West Germany are incorrect. The committee based its report on recent test results in Bavaria, where 528 of 11,824 patients tested as positive. In a second round of testing to confirm results, only 359 of the 528 again tested positive.
The committee also said Bavaria should end its policy of testing civil service applicants, foreigners applying for asylum and young men in military service.
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