The State : Rise in AIDS Deaths Seen

In four years, U. S. deaths from AIDS will reach 80,000 annually, eight times the number reported in 1985, a researcher predicts. Donald Francis of the national Centers for Disease Control office in Berkeley said one quarter of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome fatalities, or about 20,000, will be heterosexuals. “And this is mostly just the backlog of people infected already,” Francis said. With a major prevention program, he said, “deaths from AIDS will probably level off at 10,000 a year by the end of the century.”