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Two additional patients of a Florida dentist who may have transmitted the AIDS virus to a patient have also been found to be infected with the virus, Florida health officials said

The new AIDS infections were found two weeks after a newspaper in Palm Beach and nearby Stuart printed a letter from a dentist, Dr. David J. Acer, who died of AIDS on Sept. 3 at the age of 40. Last month, the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta reported that it appeared that a dentist had infected a patient with the AIDS virus during a dental procedure. It is not known exactly how many Floridians are infected with the AIDS virus. But the state ranks third in the nation in reported AIDS cases, with 12,465 as of August

''You can always hire consultants to tell you what to do but the problem is you don't know if they are giving you good advice,'' Dr. [Thomas E. Baron] said. ''You feel very helpless because you don't have the proper tools to make good decisions.'' ''You want to find out how many patients will need it and what your break-even point will be so you can pay for the equipment without altering your ethics or practice plan,'' Dr. Baron said. ''You don't want to be put in a position where you buy something and say we have got to pay for it so we had better order unnecessary tests on every patient who walks through the door.'' Dr. [Woodrow Myers], the New York City Health Commissioner, said that when he earned an M.B.A. at Stanford, ''everyone told me I was crazy to do it.'' He added, ''Now they think otherwise.''

For the first time, researchers have shown that nonsmoking adults who grew up in households with smokers have an increased risk of lung cancer

Chronic fatigue syndrome has become become a major public health concern since it was first described in 1985 as chronic mononucleosis and chronic Epstein-Barr virus syndrome. It is also known as ''yuppie flu'' because it tends to strike well-educated people in their 30's. No one is sure how many people suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome because its symptoms vary and mimic many other ailments. Doctors have no laboratory test to detect chronic fatigue syndrome. The severe fatigue can last six months or longer. ''No one feels this is a fatal condition,'' said Dr. Walter J. Gunn, principal investigator of the chronic fatigue syndrome program at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta

Scientists reported finding a possible link between a virus and chronic fatigue syndrome, a dehabilitating illness that can cause extreme weakness and other symptoms lasting for months or even years

The authors, a team headed by Dr. Ann E. Wakefield of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, said the findings cast serious doubt as to whether PCP ''necessarily results'' from reactivation of a silent infection as a child. The results were reported in the Aug. 25 issue of The Lancet, a British medical journal. The Oxford team plans to explore the significance of possible geographical variations in the distribution of the microbe. AIDS researchers, for instance, have been puzzled as to why PCP seems to be less of a problem among AIDS patients in Africa. Preliminary findings suggest that PCP is common among Africans but that other microbes kill African AIDS patients because they are more aggressive than P. carinii, Dr. [Julian M. Hopkin] said. The Oxford scientists said the new test's ''improved diagnostic power may be particularly valuable in trials to determine the efficacy of novel therapies for PCP.''

Scientists said they had found no convincing evidence that the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979 had caused a rise in cancer rates

Scientists said Friday that they had found no convincing evidence that the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 had caused a rise in cancer rates. While rates for certain cancers rose among the 160,000 people within a 10-mile radius of the power plant near Harrisburg, the researchers said the increases were not statistically significant. Dr. H. Jack Geiger, a member of the Three Mile Island Public Health Fund Science Advisory Board, said: 'There is an understandable emotional appeal to look at the cluster, go talk to those people, examine them, and follow that up