NATION IN BRIEF : GEORGIA : Dental Tools May Have Spread AIDS

A medical investigation linking the AIDS infections of two more patients to a Florida dentist who died of the deadly disease indicates that contaminated instruments may have been the source of the transmission, a federal health official said. “All along, we have been considering two possibilities--exposure to his (the dentist’s) blood or instruments contaminated by his blood or the blood of infected patients,” said Dr. Harold W. Jaffe, of the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The CDC reported in January that an AIDS-infected Florida dentist, David Acer, may have infected three patients with the virus. Two more cases have since been tied to Acer.