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* Dr. Peter Jepson-Young; Chronicled His Illness in ‘AIDS Diary’

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Peter Jepson-Young, 35, who chronicled his own decline from AIDS in a weekly television program in Canada aimed at giving dignity to those suffering from the disease. Known simply as Dr. Peter in his appearances on CBC-TV beginning in September, 1990, he was British Columbia’s highest-profile educator on acquired immune deficiency syndrome. He once said that if he had to die he would do it with style. “He did die with designer sheets and many, many weeping friends and relatives around him,” said David Paperny, producer of the “AIDS Diary” spots. Born in a Vancouver suburb, Jepson-Young graduated from the University of British Columbia. He had only practiced medicine for a few months when he became ill, at the age of 29, with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, one of the most common complications of AIDS. In each segment of the television program, Jepson-Young discussed a particular aspect of AIDS, including the blindness and cancer that eventually afflicted him. A medical colleague, Dr. Jay Wortman, said the TV audience “loved him . . . you forgot about the stigmatism of the disease and you related to him as a human being.” In Vancouver, Canada, on Sunday.

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