African Apocalypse

Africa's exploding population is already one of the world's great environmental and human disasters, and the problem could get much worse in the next few years. Yet when British biologists predicted that the number of Africans could actually begin to shrink within two decades, the reaction was unalloyed horror. The reason for the decline, said the biologists: a dramatic increase in deaths due to AIDS. Places like Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi and Tanzania, in Central and East Africa, hard hit by the epidemic, would be the most severely affected. The scientists note that Uganda will have 20 million people within 15 years, in contrast to 24 million if the epidemic hadn't happened.

Though the projections are far gloomier than those issued by the World Health Organization and the Harvard School of Public Health, they cannot be easily dismissed; the researchers, Roy Anderson of the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London and Robert May of Oxford, are highly respected. There are, however, legitimate questions about the study: for example, it presumes a higher level of sexual contact between older infected men and younger women than may actually occur. But even if it's accurate, some public-health officials would rather not know. Such gloomy talk, they fear, will persuade African governments to give up on much-needed family-planning programs.

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In France, more than 1,000 AIDS cases are being attributed to four former health officials, one of whom is accused of selling blood products that he knew were contaminated for transfusion into hemophiliacs. The others are charged with failure to use proper blood-screening tests -- largely because the tests were developed outside France. Hearings began last week, and a verdict is expected by fall.