Talk:Kimberly Bergalis

Untitled
Section taged as "unsourced" actual had numerous sources cited - also, POV edits. [How does "avowed homosexual" have anything to do with the contention that Dr. Acer was responsible for the one-and-only case of medical 'criminal transmission' of HIV?]

Article could use more cites and depth - but this was blatant POV issue.. 165.189.41.11 19:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

herpes and virginity
Just because it might be suggested that she was not a virgin when she died, it does not mean she was not a virgin at the time she got AIDS or HIV. She could have had (protected) sex after she knew she had AIDS because she wanted to experience sex before she died. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sp0 (talk • contribs) 11:56, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * There's a essential lack of proof that won't even rule out infection prior to the dental treatment she received from dr. Acer, think about. I think is too easy to blame a dead person for any "wrongdoing" (the dentist) and make a circus on the media out of it. --Officer Boscorelli (talk) 19:48, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

"most likely"
I'm removing the phrase "most likely" because there is no proof, especially after Bergalis' claims about her history turned out to be false, and replacing it with "claimed to have been" because it is a fact at least that she accused him. 76.98.84.60 (talk) 03:32, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

'''The claim did not originate with her. Her strain of HIV along with that of 5 others infected were traced to Dr Acer. making it "most likely" and outweighing her "claim". Did you read the papers cited at the bottom of the article?pikipiki (talk) 11:27, 22 May 2008 (UTC)'''

Source page #6. "These reports were based on previously unavailable documentary evidence, which suggested that the infected patients had unreported or undetected risk factors for HIV infection and that the molecular analyses used to determine that the dentist and his patients had the same strains of HIV had potentially serious flaws." And putting a whole post in bold is about as whiny looking as putting it in all caps. We get it. We see you. To conclude, apparently you yourself did not bother to read the "papers" at the bottom of the page. I'll be revisiting this change, as well as some obvoius POV. Educate yourself before editing.KVND 18:57, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Three-year old grammar???
"In those days, the public was not as DNA knowledgeable as they are today and there exists no factual proof that the CDC botched the tests."

What the Hell does the public being "DNA knowledgeable" mean and what does that have to do with "factual proof" that the CDC did or did not botch the Kimberley Bergalis AIDS test? "In those days, the public was not as DNA knowledgeable as they are today and there exists no factual proof that the CDC botched the tests" is a completely meaningless sentence, so I'm going to remove it. Hopefully you Wiki morons figyur owt how too mayk a sintese meen sumthin.

75.36.209.231 (talk) 00:33, 27 October 2008 (UTC)Sum Dum Gai

Surgical instruments
I attended one of the worst dental schools in the USA (UMKC, #58 of 60), starting in 1987, yet at that time is was already universally known that there was the potential for disease transmission through instruments contaminated with tissue and fluids. The information was widely disseminated to routinely sterilize all non-disposable invasive instruments between patients. By 1987, any practitioner who was current in the routine guidelines would have known this, and any ethical health care provider would have been doing so at this point.

I flagged the statement that this info was widely unknown at that time, in case the original author can find some credible evidence otherwise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.121.248.101 (talk) 07:40, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Citation concerns and general concerns about POV
My genetics textbook (B.A. Pierce's Genetics: A Conceptual Approach, 3rd Ed) uses this case as an example of population genetic variation. Pierce concludes that the dentist infected some of his patients. Presumably, the 50+ reviewers of the text agree. However, this article reads like an argument against the hypothesis: 'the dentist infected the patient.' It troubles me that this article seems to contradict the viewpoint of many professional geneticists in favor of the viewpoint of the CBS television show 60 Minutes. This sentence, in particular, is problematic:

These CDC tests, however, were later called into question by the Annals of Internal Medicine stating, "that the molecular analyses used to determine that the dentist and his patients had the same strains of HIV had potentially serious flaws."[4][5][6][7][8]

Couple of problems with this sentence:
 * 1) Reference 8 is an editorial that argues against the validity of the 'calling into question' and thus does not support this sentence's claim.
 * 2) The Annals of Internal Medicine is a journal.  Journals themselves do not 'state' things.  Authors of articles in them do.
 * 3) A statement that an analytical method has 'potentially serious flaws' hardly seems strong enough to merit inclusion in an encyclopedia entry anyway.  Even routine DNA testing for paternity, which is widely accepted as accurate, could 'potentially' have a flaw if it were conducted improperly.

Any suggestions for addressing this? Does anyone else agree that the POV in this article reads rather slanted against professional opinion? I'm new here and I don't want to act unilaterally. DDennisM (talk) 22:36, 13 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The Annals of Internal Medicine quote above was actually taken from a letter to the journal written by one of the 60 Minutes journalists (Stephen Barr), and so should not be attributed to the journal at all. I'll rewrite this section so that the citations match the article content. DDennisM (talk) 03:31, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Questionable citations
I can't read the articles themselves, but the abstracts suggest that the two articles do not support the claim that Barr's assertions were verified. Mangoe (talk) 19:27, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

How??
The article does not even begin to explain how the dentist infected his patients. If it was through instruments then he would have had to operate on his own mouth and then use those same instruments on patients without sterilizing them. The other possibility was that he had sex with his patients while they were under anesthesia. Or perhaps he did not wear gloves and bled profusely into his patients mouths via his hands. If the strain of HIV was really his then how on earth did he do it? 47.138.89.81 (talk) 02:38, 19 July 2022 (UTC)